trompe l'oeil

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

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

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”).

• (Received Pronunciation) (emulating French) enPR: trôɴp löy, IPA^(key): /ˈtɹɔ̃p ˈlœj/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹɔmp ˈlɔɪ/, /-ˈleɪ/

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

1. (uncountable) A genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →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.

   • 2023 March 16, Julia Felsenthal, “An Artist Whose Work Might (Possibly) Have Its Own Free Will”, in The New York Times Style Magazine‎:

     In 2008 they moved to New York, where they made waves at the 2010 Whitney Biennial with their “Fold” paintings, spray-painted canvases that were flat but seemed crumpled, a trompe l’oeil trick that reflected the artist’s enduring preoccupation with interdimensionality.

2. (countable) A painting of this kind.

• 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.

• quodlibet

• Trompe-l'œil on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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

trompe l’oeil m (plural trompe l’oeil)

1. Misspelling of trompe-l’œil.

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

trompe l'oeil m (invariable)

1. trompe l'oeil