English

Adjective

allusive ‎(comparative more allusive, superlative most allusive)

1. That contains or makes use of allusions (indirect references or hints).
   • 1984, John Bayley, Two pieces on translating Mandelstam, Selected Essays, page 149,

     English poetry is compelled by the stubbornness of the language continually to renounce the too obviously poetic: but in seeking to be more precise, more dense and more allusive, Russian poetry has never had to give up the straightforward traditional intoxications of sound and rhyme.

   • 2010, James Matthews, Late Modernism and the Marketplace, Edwina Keown, Carol Taaffe (editors), Irish Modernism, page 172,

     The footnotes ensure that the lines become more allusive and more polysemantic, vacillating between transubstantiation and ghostly intimations.

   • 2013, Nick Nicholas, George Baloglou (translators and editors), Introduction, Unknown author, An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, [14th c, Παιδιόφραστος διήγησις τῶν ζῴων τῶν τετραπόδων], page 87,

     The Book is a more allusive work than the Tale, which leads to speculation on whether the digressions in both works might not merely be a case of a rambling narrator.

Synonyms

• (containing or making indirect references or hints): suggestive

Derived terms

• allusively
• allusiveness

Related terms

• allude
• allusion

Translations

French

Adjective

allusive

1. feminine of allusif

Italian

Adjective

allusive

1. feminine plural of allusivo