illusion

noun

1 I was under no illusion about the difficulty of my job | he had destroyed her illusions:

delusion, misapprehension, misconception, deception, false impression, mistaken impression;

fantasy, dream, chimera, fool's paradise, self-deception, castles in the air, castles in Spain;

fallacy, error, misjudgement, fancy.

2 the lighting helps to increase the illusion of depth:

appearance, impression, imitation, semblance, pretence, sham;

false appearance, deceptive appearance, deception, misperception;

rare simulacrum.

▷antonyms reality.

3 the magical illusion is created using mirrors, lights, and paint:

mirage, hallucination, apparition, phantasm, phantom, vision, spectre, fantasy, figment of the imagination, will-o'-the-wisp, trick of the light;

Latin ignis fatuus.

4 he is keen to dispel any impression that his illusions are achieved using TV trickery:

magic trick, conjuring trick, trick, deception;

(illusions) magic, conjuring, sleight of hand, legerdemain, trickery.

illusion Oxford Dictionary of English