trompe l'oeil

English

WOTD – 15 May 2011

Alternative forms

Trompe l'oeil of a portrait subject escaping his frame.

Etymology

Borrowed from French trompe-l’œil (literally “deceives the eye”), from trompe (“deceives”, third-person singular present indicative of tromper) + l’ (“the”, prevocalic form of le) + œil (“eye”).

Pronunciation

Noun

trompe l’oeil (usually uncountable, plural trompe l’oeil or trompe l’oeils) (see usage notes)

  1. (uncountable) A genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
  2. (countable) A painting of this kind.

Usage notes

  • This phrase is sometimes misconstructed as trompe d’œil and trompe-d’œil, which, literally interpreted in French, means “deceives of eye”.
  • In French, trompe-l’œil is an invariant noun; the same usage is reflected in the plural use of the English trompe l’oeil. Alternatively, trompe l’oeil is treated as a headless noun phrase, to which is suffixed -s to form a regular plural form. Still otherwise, some authors form novel plurals on modified etymological bases, such as the technically correct trompent-l’œil (“[they] deceive the eye”) and the ultimately mistaken trompe les yeux (“deceives the eyes”); however, such neologistic constructions are vanishingly rare.

Synonyms

Translations

See also

References

French

Noun

trompe l'oeil m (plural trompe l'oeil)

  1. Misspelling of trompe-l’œil.

Italian

Etymology

French

Noun

trompe l'oeil m (invariable)

  1. trompe l'oeil
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