hallucination
/hə,lu:si'neiʃn/
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Noun:
- A sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, often as a symptom of a mental disorder or induced by drugs or extreme fatigue: A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the compelling sense of reality.
- A false or mistaken idea or belief; a delusion: In a more general sense, it can refer to a belief or impression that is not based in reality.
Examples
- Noun:
- The patient reported a vivid hallucination of snakes crawling on the walls.
- His claim that he could communicate with aliens was dismissed as a hallucination by the scientists.
- Severe sleep deprivation can sometimes lead to auditory hallucinations.
Advanced Usage
- "to have a hallucination": to experience a hallucination.
- Under the influence of the drug, she began to have terrifying hallucinations.
- "a hallucination of grandeur": a false belief in one's own importance, power, or identity (a specific type of delusion, often phrased as "delusions of grandeur").
- The dictator's plans for a global empire were a hallucination of grandeur.
Variants and Related Words
- Hallucinate (verb): to experience a hallucination.
- Some medications can cause patients to hallucinate.
- Hallucinatory (adjective): of or resembling a hallucination.
- The fever gave him a hallucinatory vision of his childhood home.
- Hallucinogen (noun): a substance that causes hallucinations.
- LSD is a powerful hallucinogen.
Synonyms
- Delusion: A fixed false belief, especially one resistant to reason.
- Illusion: A deceptive appearance or impression, often of something that is actually present but misinterpreted.
- Phantasm: A figment of the imagination; an illusion or apparition.
- Vision: An experience of seeing someone or something in a dream, trance, or as a supernatural apparition.
Related Phrases
- Auditory hallucination: A hallucination involving hearing sounds or voices that are not present.
- He suffered from auditory hallucinations, hearing voices that criticized him.
- Visual hallucination: A hallucination involving seeing objects, people, or lights that are not there.
- The visual hallucination of a loved one can be common in grief.
- Tactile hallucination: A hallucination involving the sense of touch, such as feeling insects on the skin.
- The sensation of bugs crawling under her skin was a persistent tactile hallucination.
Related Idioms
- "Seeing things": An informal idiom meaning to have hallucinations.
- You must be seeing things; there's no one at the door.
Noun
- an object perceived during a hallucinatory episode
- he refused to believe that the angel was a hallucination
- a mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea
- he has delusions of competence
- his dreams of vast wealth are a hallucination
- illusory perception; a common symptom of severe mental disorder