allusive

From Latin allūs-, past participle stem of allūdere (“to joke, jest”; see allude) +‎ -ive.^[1]

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əˈluː.sɪv/, /əˈljuː.sɪv/
• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈluː.sɪv/
  • Homophone: elusive

• Audio (US):

  (file)

allusive (comparative more allusive, superlative most allusive)

1. that contains or makes use of allusions (indirect references or hints)
   • 1984, John Bayley, Two pieces on translating Mandelstam: Selected Essays, page 149:

     English poetry is compelled by the stubbornness of the language continually to renounce the too obviously poetic: but in seeking to be more precise, more dense and more allusive, Russian poetry has never had to give up the straightforward traditional intoxications of sound and rhyme.

   • 2010, James Matthews, “Late Modernism and the Marketplace”, in Edwina Keown, Carol Taaffe, editors, Irish Modernism, page 172:

     The footnotes ensure that the lines become more allusive and more polysemantic, vacillating between transubstantiation and ghostly intimations.

   • 2013, Nick Nicholas, George Baloglou (translators and editors), Introduction, Unknown author, An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, [14th c, Παιδιόφραστος διήγησις τῶν ζῴων τῶν τετραπόδων], page 87,

     The Book is a more allusive work than the Tale, which leads to speculation on whether the digressions in both works might not merely be a case of a rambling narrator.

   • 2023, Brandon Taylor, chapter 1, in The Late Americans, pages 1-2:

     Around they go, taking in the poem's allusive system of images and its narrative density, the emotional heat of its subject matter, its increasing cultural salience re: women, re: trauma, re: bodies, re: life at the end of the world.

   Synonym: suggestive

• allude
• allusion

• eluvials

• IPA^(key): /a.ly.ziv/

• Audio (Canada):

  (file)

• Homophone: allusives

allusive

1. feminine singular of allusif

allusive

1. feminine plural of allusivo