illude

present singular third person illudes · participle present illuding · participle past illuded · past illuded

1. literaryTo give a false impression to.

   Tis now but wicked vanity to thinke, To color vitious deeds with good pretence, Or with bought colors to illude mens sense.

   1611, John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, London: Samuel Macham

   4 more examples

   The fleshly children of Adam bee so politicke, subtil, craftie, and wise, in theyre kynde, that the electe should be illuded if it were possible:

   1547, Catherine Parr, The Lamentation of a Sinner,

   The lines and shapes of mountains (features strongly marked) are easily caught and retained: but these meteor-forms, this rich fluctuation of airy hues, offer such a profusion of variegated splendor, that they are continually illuding the eye with breaking into each other; and are lost, as it endeavours to retain them.

   1786, William Gilpin, Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, London: R. Blamire, Vol. 1, Section 6, p. 86

   His [Jonathan Swift’s] versatile pen was prolific […] of fiction erected of impossible materials, and yet so creating and peopling a world of fancy as to illude the reader into temporary belief in its truth.

   1873, Henry Coppée, chapter 26, in English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History, Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, page 269

   I had a sudden sense of mismatch, of profound incongruity—between what I imagined I felt and what I actually saw, between what I had thought and what I now found. I felt, for a dizzying, vertiginous moment, that I had been profoundly deceived, illuded, by my senses: an illusion—such an illusion—as I had never before known.

   1984, Oliver Sacks, chapter 2, in A Leg to Stand On, New York: Summit Books, page 69

   Synonyms: deceive, delude, dupe, fool, mislead, trick