English

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

Alternative forms

• trompe l’œil, trompe-l’oeil, trompe-l’œil

Noun

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

1. (uncountable) A genre of still life 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

• quodlibet

Translations

See also

• Trompe-l'œil on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

• “‖trompe l’œil” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]

Italian

Etymology

French

Noun

trompe l'oeil m ‎(invariable)

1. trompe l'oeil