Word.ws English Dictionary

trompe-l'œil

trompe-l'œil is the alternative form of trompe l'oeil.

Meaning of trompe l'oeil

Noun

trompe l'oeil (usually uncountable, plural trompe l'oeil or trompe l'oeils)

  1. (usually) A genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
    • It looked like a private apartment, and yet it seemed also to be a place of business. It was furnished in decorative style with plastic, trick art objects hanging on the walls, geometrical forms of the trompe l'oeil type that intrigue business people. They are peculiarly vulnerable to art...1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 74
  2. (countable, usually) A painting of this kind.

Questions about trompe-l'œil

What is trompe-l'œil the alternative form of?
Trompe-l'œil is the alternative form of trompe l'oeil.

Words near trompe-l'œil in the dictionary

  1. trompe l'oeil
  2. trompe l'oeils
  3. trompe l'œil
  4. trompe-d'œil
  5. trompe-l'oeil
  6. trompe-l'œil
  7. tromped
  8. trompement
  9. trompements
  10. trompes
  11. Trompette Militaire

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trompe-l'œil (page history and authors); trompe l'oeil (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “trompe-l'œil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trompe-l%27%C5%93il. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.