Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use allude in a sentence

29 example sentences · verb

Allude means to refer to something indirectly or by suggestion; to invoke it by implication rather than mention. Example: “First, she alluded to her husband as "the man at home looking after the children". Then she referred to him as "my George".”

Examples of allude by meaning

verbTo refer to something indirectly or by suggestion; to invoke it by implication rather than mention.

  • First, she alluded to her husband as "the man at home looking after the children". Then she referred to him as "my George".
  • Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.2012 January, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012...

More sentences with allude

  • If you are alluding to Dostoevski’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Karamazov Brothers and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigmarole.From the entry rigmarole
  • Richter's concept of 'capitalist realism' alluded to the doctrines of socialist realism east of the border.2013, John Sandford, editor, Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture, Routledge, →ISBN. From the entry capitalist realism
  • Smudger An old term for a photographer, one that alludes to dodgy developing.2004, Ray Puxley, Britslang: An Uncensored A-Z of the People's Language, Including Rhyming Slang, Robson, published 2004, page 456. From the entry smudger
  • Another reason for Keri'at Shema is that it alludes to the Ten Commandments.1996, Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer, page 294. From the entry Kriat Shema
  • Some of these reposters alluded to the “Feinstein Amendment” as an abridgement of speech and motivator behind their repostings.2020, Mark A. Tallman, Ghost Guns, page 138. From the entry reposting
  • It produced a complex mythic timescape, which stretches throughout modernity, but frequently also alludes to pre-modern elements, both classical-ancient and Northern-archaic.2006, Maike Oergel, “Historicity as Identity: The German Myth of Modernity in Goethe’s Faust I”, in Culture and Identity: Historicity in…. From the entry timescape
  • I've seen what you are alluding to.1999 December 6, Pete Fagerlin, “Re: trail damage”, in alt.mountain-bike (Usenet), message-ID <RJX24.1587$lL.34725@nnrp3.rcsntx.swbell.net>. From the entry horseable
  • I am not alluding to the fragmentation of specialties; I speak of the insignificance of a certain verbal grouping.1975, W[illard] V[an Orman] Quine, “A Letter to Mr. [Robert] Ostermann”, in Charles J. Bontempo, S. Jack Odell, editors, The Owl of…. From the entry bibliothecary
  • Hinting and alluding thus become indispensable methods of communication.1974, Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., chapter 8, in The Myth of Mental Illness, →ISBN, page 139. From the entry sexual intercourse
  • Yesterday, OpenAI announced an API for ChatGPT and posted an underlying format for the bot on GitHub, alluding to the issue of prompt injections.2023 March 3, Chloe Xiang, “Hackers Can Turn Bing's AI Chatbot Into a Convincing Scammer, Researchers Say”, in VICE, archived from the…. From the entry prompt injection
  • Here, home is Ukraine, as alluded to by delicate wood carvings, boldly painted figures and an impressive line of babushka’d nesting dolls.2018 December 14, Jasmine Mangalaseril, “Hearty Ukrainian and Russian favourites at Teremok Café”, in Waterloo Region Record, Kitchener…. From the entry nalesnik
  • One number directly alluded to that show’s “Butter and Egg Man,” with three men in chefwear vying for the attention of a female singer.2015, Brian Seibert, What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 531. From the entry chefwear
  • Presumably he is here alluding to the Stoic idea that the meaning of a concept-word can be split into a lectical and a real component.2013, Richard Gaskin, Language, Truth, and Literature: A Defence of Literary Humanism, Oxford University Press, page 242. From the entry lectical
  • “On the way out here, we were talking, and you alluded to a certain amount of, uh, odorousness coming out of this place.”2007, Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, 4th Estate (2010), page 296. From the entry odorousness
  • In fact, Hamsun now completes his allusion to the story of the Gadarene swine alluded to by Pauline in the previous novel.2005, Sverre Lyngstad, Knut Hamsun, Novelist: A Critical Assessment, Peter Lang, page 294. From the entry Gadarene swine
  • “Nobody has ever asked us what we wanted,” a resentful Bougainvillean told a visitor, alluding to the copper development as well as the colonial history.1971 July 25, Robert Trumbull, “Bougainvilleans Offered Shares in a Rich Mine”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times…. From the entry Bougainvillean
  • 'You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,' he said, shaking the paper at me.1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine. From the entry lucubration
  • Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences.1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Sisters”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 11. From the entry puzzle
  • Throughout the novel, in fact, Cambias alludes to many stefnal icons and tropes in knowing and humorous ways that never go over the border to self-indulgence or parody.2021 May 16, Paul Di Filippo, “Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Godel Operation by James L. Cambias”, in Locus. From the entry stefnal
  • The continued enthusiasm demonstrated here alludes to the power SBP has within HP fandom: as Emmie describes it, SBP is “the cornerstone of the Wolfstar fandom” (“Shoebox Project”).2018, Kasandra Arthur, "We Are Having All Kinds of Fun: Fluidity in Shoebox Project", thesis submitted to the University of Waterloo, page…. From the entry Wolfstar
  • The everyday settings alluded to above are of interest because they make it possible for organizations to achieve their own macro-inferences about their own day-to-day activities.2014, Karin Knorr Cetina, A.V. Cicourel, Advances in Social Theory and Methodology, page 66. From the entry macroinference
  • Vedic -dhyai, as just alluded to, has been considered by many distinguished scholars to be a deradical rather than a depresential suffix, except in a few special forms.2013, Benjamin W. Fortson IV, “Latin -(r)ier and its Indo-Iranian congeners”, in Indogermanische Forschungen, number 117, pages 75–118. From the entry deradical
  • We have already alluded to decoherence in connection with the emergence of classical space-time, the ‘collapse′ of the wave function (Case 3) and the notion of entanglement.2004, Friedel Weinert, The Scientist as Philosopher: Philosophical Consequences of Great Scientific Discoveries, Springer, page 272. From the entry decoherence
  • The common name, Caper Spurge, alludes to the resemblance of the spongy capsules to capers, which are young flower buds from quite a different plant, Capparis.1986 January 1, Thomas C. Fuller, Elizabeth May McClintock, Poisonous Plants of California, Univ of California Press, →ISBN, page 136. From the entry caper spurge
  • This calendar is obviously alluded to in 1 Kings vi 38 where we are told that Solomon’s temple was completed in the month of Bul, the eighth month ³).1986, Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Cult and Calendar Reform of Jeroboam I”, in King, Cult, and Calendar in Ancient Israel: Collected Studies…. From the entry Etanim
  • That books are pouring off the world’s presses at unprecedented rates is a fact often alluded to as a flood that is inundating libraries and the book trades.1972, Carol A. Nemeyer, Scholarly Reprint Publishing in the United States, New York, N.Y.: R. R. Bowker Co., →ISBN, page 8. From the entry press
  • Instead of overlaying secondary images by alluding to an existing literary or oral tradition, structural overcodes overlay the secondary images by using technical vocabulary from a different frame of reference.2006, Jerry Camery-Hoggatt, Speaking of God: Reading and Preaching the Word of God, →ISBN, page 126. From the entry overcode

Meaning of allude

  1. verb To refer to something indirectly or by suggestion; to invoke it by implication rather than mention.

Full definition of allude

Questions about allude in a sentence

How do you use allude in a sentence?
Allude is used as a verb. For example: “First, she alluded to her husband as "the man at home looking after the children". Then she referred to him as "my George".”
What is a short sentence with allude?
“I've seen what you are alluding to.”
What does allude mean?
Allude means to refer to something indirectly or by suggestion; to invoke it by implication rather than mention.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: allude (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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