Sometimes you think you know a word, but when you check it, you discover that you’ve mixed it up with a similar-sounding word. That’s what happened to me this week with the words elusive and illusive. Without looking them up, do you know what they mean?
When you’re searching for something but have trouble finding it, that thing is elusive. According to the Collins English Dictionary, it means:
1. difficult to catch (an elusive thief)
2. preferring or living in solitude and anonymity
3. difficult to remember (an elusive thought)
So something that is elusive might difficult to find, describe, remember, or achieve.
Illusive, on the other hand, means illusory or unreal.
So something that is illusive could also be elusive.
Elusive comes from the Latin elus-, the past participle stem of eludere (to elude, frustrate) plus the -ive ending. Elude comes from ex- (out, away) and ludere (to play) [source].
Illusive comes from illusion + -ive. Illusion comes from the Old French illusion (a mocking, deceit, deception), from the Latin illusionem (a mocking, jesting, jeering; irony), from the past participle stem of illudere (mock at), from in- (at, upon) and ludere (to play) [source].
At first I thought this was a perfect example of a malapropism – i.e. accidentally replacing a word with a similar-sounding but unrelated one – but then I realised they’re actually homophonic heterographs, which I don’t think counts.
Is there a specific term for replacing a word with a heterograph, or is it just considered a spelling error? In that case I think we need to invent one.
I have to find a related word that I know really well to distinguish between pairs like these. For the illusive/elusive pair, the meanings (and spellings) of the words/phrases “illusion” and “he eluded the hunters” are well ingrained in me.
I always start spelling ‘effect’ as ‘affect’, and have think of phrases like “he was an effective communicator” vs. “he had an affected style” to get the spelling right.
Foreign language can be confusing sometimes.