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?<\/p>\n
When you’re searching for something but have trouble finding it, that thing is elusive. According to the Collins English Dictionary<\/a>, it means:<\/p>\n 1. difficult to catch (an elusive thief) So something that is elusive might difficult to find, describe, remember, or achieve.<\/p>\n Illusive, on the other hand, means illusory or unreal.<\/p>\n So something that is illusive could also be elusive.<\/p>\n Elusive comes from the Latin elus-<\/em>, the past participle stem of eludere<\/em> (to elude, frustrate) plus the -ive<\/em> ending. Elude comes from ex-<\/em> (out, away) and ludere<\/em> (to play) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n Illusive comes from illusion + -ive. Illusion comes from the Old French illusion<\/em> (a mocking, deceit, deception), from the Latin illusionem<\/em> (a mocking, jesting, jeering; irony), from the past participle stem of illudere<\/em> (mock at), from in-<\/em> (at, upon) and ludere<\/em> (to play) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. preferring or living in solitude and anonymity
\n3. difficult to remember (an elusive thought)<\/p>\n