Delusion

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Delusion \De*lu"sion\n. [L. delusio, fr. deludere. See
     {Delude}.]
     1. The act of deluding; deception; a misleading of the mind.
        --Pope.
        [1913 Webster]
  


     2. The state of being deluded or misled.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. That which is falsely or delusively believed or
        propagated; false belief; error in belief.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              And fondly mourned the dear delusion gone. --Prior.
  
     Syn: {Delusion}, {Illusion}.
  
     Usage: These words both imply some deception practiced upon
            the mind. Delusion is deception from want of
            knowledge; illusion is deception from morbid
            imagination. An illusion is a false show, a mere cheat
            on the fancy or senses. It is, in other words, some
            idea or image presented to the bodily or mental vision
            which does not exist in reality. A delusion is a false
            judgment, usually affecting the real concerns of life.
            Or, in other words, it is an erroneous view of
            something which exists indeed, but has by no means the
            qualities or attributes ascribed to it. Thus we speak
            of the illusions of fancy, the illusions of hope,
            illusive prospects, illusive appearances, etc. In like
            manner, we speak of the delusions of stockjobbing, the
            delusions of honorable men, delusive appearances in
            trade, of being deluded by a seeming excellence. "A
            fanatic, either religious or political, is the subject
            of strong delusions; while the term illusion is
            applied solely to the visions of an uncontrolled
            imagination, the chimerical ideas of one blinded by
            hope, passion, or credulity, or lastly, to spectral
            and other ocular deceptions, to which the word
            delusion is never applied." --Whately.
            [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  delusion
       n 1: (psychology) an erroneous belief that is held in the face of
            evidence to the contrary [syn: {psychotic belief}]
       2: a mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea; "he has delusions
          of competence"; "his dreams of vast wealth are a
          hallucination" [syn: {hallucination}]
       3: the act of deluding; deception by creating illusory ideas
          [syn: {illusion}, {head game}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  188 Moby Thesaurus words for "delusion":
     aberrancy, aberration, acting, affectation, agnosia, airy nothing,
     apparition, appearance, artifice, attitudinizing, autism,
     bamboozlement, befooling, block, blocking, bluff, bluffing, bubble,
     calculated deception, casuistry, cheat, cheating, chicane,
     chicanery, chimera, circumvention, color, coloring, conning,
     counterfeit, daydream, deceit, deceiving, deception, deceptiveness,
     defectiveness, defrauding, delirium, deluded belief,
     delusion of persecution, delusiveness, dereism, deviancy, disguise,
     disorientation, dissemblance, dissembling, dissimulation,
     distortion, dream, dream vision, dreamland, dreamworld, dupery,
     eidolon, enmeshment, ensnarement, entanglement, entrapment,
     equivocation, errancy, erroneousness, error, facade, face, fake,
     fakery, faking, fallaciousness, fallacy, false air, false belief,
     false front, false show, falseness, falsity, fancy, fantasy, fault,
     faultiness, feigning, feint, figment, flaw, flawedness,
     flight of ideas, flimflam, flimflammery, fond illusion, fooling,
     four-flushing, fraud, front, ghost, gilt, gloss, hallucination,
     hallucinosis, hamartia, heresy, heterodoxy, hoodwinking, humbug,
     humbuggery, ignis fatuus, illusion, imposture, kidding, masquerade,
     mental block, mental confusion, meretriciousness, mirage,
     misapplication, misbelief, misconception, misconstruction,
     misdoing, misfeasance, misinterpretation, misjudgment, mistake,
     nihilism, nihilistic delusion, ostentation, outward show,
     outwitting, overreaching, paralogia, peccancy, perversion,
     phantasm, phantom, pipe dream, playacting, pose, posing, posture,
     pretense, pretension, pretext, psychological block, putting on,
     representation, ruse, seeming, self-contradiction, self-deceit,
     self-deception, self-delusion, semblance, shade, sham, show,
     simulacrum, simulation, sin, sinfulness, snow job, song and dance,
     sophism, sophistry, speciousness, spoofery, spoofing, spuriousness,
     stratagem, subterfuge, swindling, trick, trickery, trickiness,
     tricking, trip, unorthodoxy, untrueness, untruth, untruthfulness,
     vapor, varnish, victimization, vision, willful misconception,
     window dressing, wishful thinking, wrong, wrong impression,
     wrongness
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  DELUSION, med. jurisp. A diseased state of the mind, in which persons 
  believe things to exist, which exist only, or in the degree they are 
  conceived of only in their own imaginations, with a persuasion so fixed and 
  firm, that neither evidence nor argument can convince them to the contrary. 
       2. The individual is, of course, insane. For example, should a parent 
  unjustly persist without the least ground in attributing to his daughter a 
  course of vice, and use her with uniform unkindness, there not being the 
  slightest pretence or color of reason for the supposition, a just inference 
  of insanity, or delusion, would arise in the minds of a jury: because a 
  supposition long entertained and persisted in, after argument to the 
  contrary, and against the natural affections of a parent, suggests that he 
  must labor under some morbid mental delusion. 3 Addams' R. 90, 91; Id. 180; 
  Hagg. R. 27 and see Dr. Connolly's Inquiry into Insanity, 384; Ray, Med. 
  Jur. Prel. Views., Sec. 20, p. 41, and Sec. 22, p. 47; 3 Addams, R. 79; 1 
  Litt. R. 371 Annales d'Hygiene Publique, tom. 3, p. 370; 8 Watts, 70; 13 
  Ves. 89; 1 Pow. Dev. by Jarman, 130, note Shelf. on Lun. 296; 2 Bouv. Inst. 
  n. 2104-10. 
  
  

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  DELUSION, n.  The father of a most respectable family, comprising
  Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many
  other goodly sons and daughters.
  
      All hail, Delusion!  Were it not for thee
      The world turned topsy-turvy we should see;
      For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies,
      Would fly abandoned Virtue's gross advances.
                                                          Mumfrey Mappel