trompe l'oeil

See also: trompe-l'oeil, trompe l'œil, and trompe-l'œil

English

WOTD – 15 May 2011

Alternative forms

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

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

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

(Received Pronunciation) enPR: tʀôɴp löy, IPA^(key): /tʁɔ̃p lœj/

Noun

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

(uncountable) A genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
(countable) A painting of this kind.
- 1976, Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift, New York: Avon, →ISBN, page 74:
  It looked like a private apartment, and yet it seemed also to be a place of business. It was furnished in decorative style with plastic, trick art objects hanging on the walls, geometrical forms of the trompe l'oeil type that intrigue business people. They are peculiarly vulnerable to art racketeers.

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

genre of still life painting

Chinese:
Mandarin: please add this translation if you can
Finnish: trompe-l'œil
French: trompe-l'œil (fr)
Italian: trompe l'oeil m, inganna l'occhio f
Polish: trompe l’oeil m
Russian: тромплей m (tromplej), опти́ческая иллю́зия (ru) (optíčeskaja illjúzija), обма́н зре́ния (obmán zrénija)
Spanish: trampantojo (es) m

painting of this kind

Chinese:
Mandarin: please add this translation if you can
Finnish: trompe-l'œil, optinen illuusio
French: trompe-l'œil (fr)
Italian: trompe l'oeil m, inganna l'occhio f
Polish: trompe l’oeil m
Russian: тромплей m (tromplej)

References

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

French

Noun

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

Misspelling of trompe-l’œil.

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French trompe-l'œil (literally “deceive the eye”).

Noun

trompe l'oeil m (invariable)

trompe l'oeil