(n.) A mystical word or collocation of letters written as in the figure. Worn on an amulet it was supposed to ward off fever. At present the word is used chiefly in jest to denote something without meaning; jargon.
Example Sentences:
(1) He has seen couples with very low numbers of eggs "and, abracadabra, they conceive naturally."
(2) There was an abracadabra moment when he announced that net debt was starting to fall, sooner than expected, but surprise immediately soured when the Office for Budget Responsibility tweeted that £20bn in asset sales were flattering the relevant figures.
(3) The Press Trust of India criticised the film for its "exotic India package – snake charmers in red turbans, magicians who say abracadabra and slum dwellers who speak pukka English".
Illusion
Definition:
(n.) An unreal image presented to the bodily or mental vision; a deceptive appearance; a false show; mockery; hallucination.
(n.) Hence: Anything agreeably fascinating and charning; enchantment; witchery; glamour.
(n.) A sensation originated by some external object, but so modified as in any way to lead to an erroneous perception; as when the rolling of a wagon is mistaken for thunder.
(n.) A plain, delicate lace, usually of silk, used for veils, scarfs, dresses, etc.
Example Sentences:
(1) By using various colors, it is possible to tattoo a nipple-areola complex onto the breast that will have an illusion of projection.
(2) Apnea monitoring did not prevent, and in fact perpetrated the illusion of SIDS in this infant.
(3) Pope Francis’s no-longer-secret meeting in Washington DC with anti-gay activist Kim Davis, the controversial Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed over her refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses in compliance with state law, leaves LGBT people with no illusions about the Pope’s stance on equal rights for us, despite his call for inclusiveness.
(4) Cocaine produces simple hallucinations, PCP can produce complex hallucinations analogous to a paranoid psychosis, while LSD produces a combination of hallucinations, pseudohallucinations and illusions.
(5) They must be kept secret because publication would destroy the illusion of a royal neutrality no one in power thinks exists any more.
(6) They impose the illusion of order on a chaotic life; they cement our place within and commitment to a collective.
(7) The preliminary experiments described here suggest that tilt aftereffects and illusions induced by projected slides of tilted real-object scenes have angular functions similar to that induced by a line grating.
(8) These variants, which yielded a robust illusion, included dihedral angles in place of the arrowheads of the classical pattern.
(9) During vibration of the depressor muscles with the mandible in its rest position the subjects underestimated an opening movement, but fixation of the mandible caused no illusions of movement.
(10) Stimuli were circular beams of light projected on screens (Delboef type of illusion).
(11) The director John Hillcoat and I were under no illusions.
(12) When the shaft is shortened and reaches neither of the vertices of the two pairs of wings, a reversed Müller-Lyer illusion is observed: a shaft between inward-pointing wings appears to be longer than a shaft between the outward-pointing wings.
(13) An illusion is something done one way that looks the other, like if you put a mirror in front of a pencil so the pencil looks like it's somewhere else.
(14) The subjects were asked to relate dreams, thoughts, or other mental illusions experienced during G-LOC episodes.
(15) While Yarmolenko stayed quiet, Stepanenko left no illusions as to his interpretation.
(16) The count of publications on geometric-optical illusions and the bibliography of extant books on the topic are brought up to date.
(17) The illusion is of watching a prima ballerina dancing only for you.
(18) Is Sisi’s UK visit going to fill my car with gas?’ A lot of people are increasingly disenchanted with the government, simply because it is failing to live up to its own illusions of grandeur.” Among the disenchanted are thousands of workers in the critical textiles sector who are striking over pay and conditions.
(19) Four experiments were conducted to investigate the role of "large" squares on the occurrence of assimilation and contrast in the Baldwin illusion.
(20) It creates a dangerous illusion that simply by reducing sugar intake, one can eradicate obesity.