- delusion
- delusion, illusion, hallucination, mirage denote something which is believed to be or is accepted as being true or real but which is actually false or unreal.Delusion in general implies self-deception or deception by others; it may connote a disordered state of mind, extreme gullibility, or merely an inability to distinguish between what only seems to be and what actually is true or real{
suffer from delusions of persecution
}{he recovered consciousness slowly, unwilling to let go of a pleasing delusion that he was in Rome— Cather
}{old Nuflo, lately so miserable, now happy in his delusions— Hudson
}{she labored under the delusion that the constitution and social condition of her country were ... on the upward plane— Rose Macaulay
}{wild oats were to be sown early under the common delusion that they would not have to be sown again— Simmons
}Illusion seldom implies mental derangement or even the inability to distinguish between the true and the false; rather it implies an ascription of truth or reality to what only seems to be true or real, especially to the eyes{an optical illusion
}or to the imagination{artistic illusion
}or to one's mind as influenced by one's feelings or sentiments{a lover's illusions
}{during a quake, when I used to . . . observe the houses swaying toward one another, I would have the illusion that they were actually bumping heads— Heiser
}{nature, we know, first taught the architect to produce by long colonnades the illusion of distance— Hudson
}{if you have built up an immunity against the illusion that you know the whole truth— Lippmann
}{most modern great men are mere illusions sprung out of a national hunger for greatness— Anderson
}Hallucination implies the perception of visual images or, less often, of other sensory impressions (as sounds or odors) that have no reality but are the product of disordered sensory organs, nerves, or mind or are associated with particular disorders (as delirium tremens or intense fever){the burglar in her room was only a hallucination
}{the flying-saucer hallucination may be attributed, in part, to the public's conviction that all sorts of strange objects are flying through the sky— Leonard
}{suffers from the hallucination that he is being pursued
}{he had hallucinations as a child. Mediaeval figures from the Faerie Queene had walked beside him on his way to school— Brooks
}Mirage is comparable with the preceding terms only in its extended sense in which it usually applies to a vision, dream, hope, or aim which one takes as a guide, not realizing that it is merely an illusion{this hope to find your people ... is a mirage, a delusion, which will lead to destruction if you will not abandon it— Hudson
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
