My reference to Bob Dylan in the podictionary episode on the word icon, caught the eye of not a podictionary listener, but a podictionary blog reader who’s a big Bob Dylan fan.

Tom Grasty has actually written a book called Blood on the Tracks that isn’t about Bob Dylan, but alludes to him. That’s why when I asked Tom for a favorite word, he chose allude.

I just looked this up so I know that to allude to something is to make indirect reference to it.

That means Tom’s book never actually mentions Bob Dylan, but Blood on the Tracks; a Dylan album, like duh!

So he refers to Blood on the Tracks, but alludes to Dylan.

That’s a pretty subtle difference there between refer and allude; kind of plays with your mind doesn’t it. That’s appropriate too because the etymological roots of allude are all about play.

Allude came into English about 500 years ago from Latin. Probably one of those words pulled from Latin directly by writers who wanted to show off how smart they were. English professors call these inkhorn terms.

Anyway, back in Latin allude was originally two words ad ludere, ad meaning “to” and ludere meaning “play.”

So the reason that allusion is indirect reference is that the person is only playing with the reference.

For a while there—because of this “playing” meaning—to allude was also to “make fun of.”

But what really attracted my attention was that it isn’t often that we come across a word that English got from Latin but that doesn’t have an Indo-European root. The American Heritage Dictionary does list that Latin ludere along with Indo-European roots, but it also says that it may actually be from Etruscan instead.

Etruscan is thought not to be an Indo-European language but it was a pretty important one. The Etruscans were the folks who set the framework for the Roman Empire. That’s why it’s quite possible that one of their words might have wiggled its way into Latin.

Just like many words must have existed in Old English but are a bit hard to trace because so few documents have survived, there are few samples of Etruscan writing so it’s hard to be sure exactly which Etruscan words made it into Latin. Even worse for those who study Etruscan, so few other related languages exist (and have documents to study) that although scholars can read Etruscan letters and make out the words, they can’t always figure out what the words mean.

The Etruscan text usually doesn’t even allude to a meaning.