ALLUSION VS. ILLUSION

 I grant you that it is often hard, but I try to listen to what people say, and I even go further: I try to listen to how they say what they say. Sometimes, what people say does not jibe with what they mean or what we intuit they mean or try to express. Lately, I have noticed how some speakers say "allusion" when they mean "illusion". The phonetics of both words are similar and may be open to misinterpretation. Luckily, today, online English dictionaries gift us with sound, and we can hear the phonetic difference between "illusion", something that deceives or misleads intellectually (among other definitions), and "allusion", a passing or casual reference. Dr. Wayne Dyer interchanged -or mispronounced- both words often. To avoid this, we should practice pronouncing the two words out loud or in a whisper.