Meaning & use
hallucination
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Meanings
nouncountable or uncountablemedical
An experience of seeing, hearing or feeling something that is not really there.
Grammar: Countable for a single experience (a hallucination), uncountable in general (prone to hallucination).
Patterns
- have a hallucination
- a hallucination of something
High fever caused him to have vivid hallucinations.
She described a hallucination in which the walls were moving.
Certain drugs can lead to hallucination.
nouncountableinformalfigurative
Something imagined that seems real, such as a mistaken belief.
Grammar: Figurative; informal speakers say it was a hallucination.
Patterns
- a hallucination about something
The oasis was just a hallucination of the desert heat.
I thought I saw him, but it was probably a hallucination.
That promised raise was a hallucination, apparently.
nouncountablecomputingtechnical
A confident but false statement produced by an artificial intelligence system.
Grammar: Computing term; used when software makes up facts.
Patterns
- a hallucination in something
The chatbot's answer was a hallucination because the book does not exist.
Developers try to reduce hallucination in language models.
Always check sources, since a hallucination can sound convincing.
Word forms
| plural | hallucinations |
|---|
Common combinations
- auditory hallucination
- He experienced an auditory hallucination of footsteps.
- visual hallucination
- A visual hallucination made her see faces in the wall.
- suffer from hallucinations
- The patient suffers from hallucinations.
- drug-induced hallucination
- A drug-induced hallucination lasted several hours.
- vivid hallucination
- She had a vivid hallucination of a garden.
Synonyms and how they differ
- illusion
- An illusion is a real thing misread by the senses, while a hallucination is perceiving something with no source at all.
- delusion
- A delusion is a false belief, whereas a hallucination is a false sensory experience.
- mirage
- A mirage is a natural optical effect others can see, but a hallucination is only in one mind.
- vision
- Vision can be spiritual or imaginative, while hallucination suggests illness or substances.
Opposites
Word family
- hallucinate verb
- to see or hear things that are not there
- hallucinatory adjective
- causing or like hallucinations
- hallucinogen noun
- a substance that causes hallucinations
- hallucinogenic adjective
- causing hallucinations
Commonly confused: hallucination or delusion?
hallucination vs delusion
A delusion is a strongly held false belief, but a hallucination is something you seem to perceive with your senses.
Practice
Hearing a voice calling your name when nobody is in the house is best described as a ___.
Choose one answer.
Hearing something absent is a sensory experience, so hallucination fits. A delusion is a false belief, which is the tempting wrong choice.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “hallucination”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.