WORD OF THE DAY
Elude means "evade or escape," like the way you might elude the other kids during a game of hide-and-seek. This word can also mean "to be hard to understand." No matter how hard you try, the finer points of quantum physics might elude you.
Elude has a slippery feeling to it. You elude the police, math can elude you — and that yak you went to see on safari but never got a glimpse of, you might say that he has eluded you as well. Delude means "to deceive," and there are times when someone can both delude and elude you — like when the conman took your money and then escaped out the back door.
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Commonly confused words with elude
allude / elude
Allude is coy, to allude is to refer to something in an indirect manner. But elude's favorite thing to do is hide from the cops; it means "to evade." Because the accent is on the second syllable in both words, it's easy to get them mixed up.
read moreVocabulary lists containing elude
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