Two-Minute Drill: Allude and Elude

This post is the first in what I hope will be a series of short (two minutes to read) articles highlighting commonly confused or misused words.

I was reading a blog article yesterday, and the following sentence caught my eye. Then it made me grit my teeth. Fortunately, I have a dentist appointment Thursday for a new crown. (Okay, just kidding about the crown.) Here’s the offending statement:

Why people find this concept so difficult to understand simply alludes me.

You may be wondering why I didn’t include allude and elude in yesterday’s article on homophones. The simple answer is, they aren’t. Homophones, that is. Yes, they sound similar, but it’s a long way from “similar” to “identical.” The first syllable of allude is pronounced as “ah,” while the initial syllable of elude sounds like “eh.”

Having cleared that up, let’s¹ move on to the difference between the two words under discussion.

Allude is a verb meaning “to refer (to)” while elude is a verb meaning “to evade.” Not even remotely close in meaning, are they? Then why do people continue to confuse them? I could construct a pretty elaborate theory on why it happens, but that would be a lengthy tangent we don’t need to explore here.

People don’t take time to proofread and edit before they hit the "publish" or "send" button

What I really think is that a lot of people (mostly bloggers, I’m sad to say) don’t take enough time to proofread and edit before hitting the “publish” or “send” button. The unfortunate consequence is they come off appearing to be less knowledgeable and less authoritative than otherwise might be the case. Furthermore, when I see such egregious errors, it really throws off my ability to focus on the actual point of what I’m reading.

By way of analogy, imagine driving down the highway on a nice spring day, really enjoying the drive, when suddenly you have to swerve quickly to avoid a crate in the middle of the road. I don’t know about you, but I’d be a bit shaken by that. The same sort of thing happens when I see words like these misused. (Well, okay, my blood pressure doesn’t spike and my heart rate doesn’t climb, but you get the idea, I hope.)

While we’re talking about allude,  we should probably bring in its noun form, allusion, and the similar-sounding (but again, not homophonic) illusion.² An allusion is a (possibly vague or veiled) reference to something, while an illusion is an act of deceiving, or a misleading image presented to one’s vision.

Once again, careful proofreading should catch errors involving these words, as long as you know which is the correct one in the first place. But that’s why you’re reading this!