Hallucination
//həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən// noun
noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A sensory perception of something that does not exist, often arising from disorder of the nervous system, as in delirium tremens. countable, uncountable
"Hallucinations are always evidence of cerebral derangement and are common phenomena of insanity."
- 2 an object perceived during a hallucinatory episode wordnet
- 3 The act of hallucinating; a wandering of the mind; an error, mistake or blunder. countable, uncountable
"This must have been the hallucination of the transcriber."
- 4 a mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea wordnet
- 5 A confident but incorrect response given by an artificial intelligence; a confabulation. countable, uncountable
"Chatbots even forget that they are a bot and experience "hallucinations", Meta's description for when a bot confidently says something that is not true."
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- 6 illusory perception; a common symptom of severe mental disorder wordnet
Example
More examples"It might have been real. Or maybe it was just a hallucination. I really hope it was the latter."
Etymology
Derives from the verb hallucinate, from Latin hallucinatus. Compare French hallucination. The first known usage in the English language is from Sir Thomas Browne.
Related phrases
More for "hallucination"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.