A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
mirage
The optical illusion produced by light refracting through layers of air at different temperatures, bending the image of the sky down onto the ground so that the desert appears to hold water. A mirage is not a hallucination — it is real light, really bending.
Etymology
French, from se mirer, to be reflected, ultimately from Latin mirare, to wonder at, to look at.