hallucinate
Americanverb (used without object)
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hallucinates,
present (3rd person singular)
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hallucinated,
past participle, past
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hallucinating
present participle
-
to see or hear things that do not exist outside the mind; have hallucinations.
People who ingested this fungus often hallucinated, seeing colored lights or hearing voices.
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Computers, Digital Technology. (of a machine learning program) to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual.
verb (used with object)
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hallucinates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hallucinated,
past participle, past
-
hallucinating
present participle
-
to see or hear (things that do not exist outside the mind); have hallucinations about.
In dramatic moments, the character hallucinates a very funny animated bear.
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Archaic. to affect with hallucinations.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hallucinatesimple
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hallucinatessimple
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have hallucinatedperfect
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has hallucinatedperfect
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am hallucinatingprogressive
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are hallucinatingprogressive
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is hallucinatingprogressive
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have been hallucinatingperfect progressive
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has been hallucinatingperfect progressive
Past
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hallucinatedsimple
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had hallucinatedperfect
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was hallucinatingprogressive
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were hallucinatingprogressive
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had been hallucinatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hallucinate
First recorded in 1595–1605; from Latin hallūcinātus “wandered mentally” past participle of hallūcinārī, variant of (h)ālūcinārī “to dream, talk idly, wander mentally”
Explanation
To hallucinate is to see or hear something that's not really there. If you hallucinate, it's a bit like dreaming while being awake. When someone hallucinates, what they're perceiving seems very real and vivid, although it's not. Many different things can cause a person to hallucinate, including drugs, mental illness, damage to the brain, and even lack of adequate sleep. Some people hallucinate regularly, if mildly, just as they're falling asleep at night. The original meaning of hallucinate was "deceive," from the Latin hallucinatus, "wander in the mind."
Vocabulary lists containing hallucinate
The Marvels
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Ungifted
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The Legend of Auntie Po
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But new research suggests there may be a more concerning issue emerging: humans can begin to "hallucinate with AI."
From Science Daily ● May 11, 2026
AI systems can "hallucinate", inventing plausible but incorrect answers.
From BBC ● Apr. 30, 2026
By their nature, AI models hallucinate and generate inconsistent answers—so why are they suddenly useful enough to get real work done?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 19, 2026
AI tools are known to hallucinate, or make up information.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2026
One glance at his dumbstruck face was all I needed to know that I didn’t just hallucinate everything.
From "Warcross" by Marie Lu
If an agent hallucinates, Arcade can catch the error and correct it, allowing the workflow to continue, he said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
"This means that visual information about things happening in the outside world becomes less accessible to our consciousness. To fill this gap in the puzzle, our brain inserts fragments from memory -- it hallucinates."
From Science Daily ● Feb. 15, 2026
What good is AI that analyzes financial data if it hallucinates numbers?
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 3, 2025
The puppeteer even hallucinates seeing Eric standing next to him, wisecracking and poking holes in his ego - because "puppets say the things we can't".
From BBC ● May 26, 2024
Sometimes Enrique hallucinates that someone is chasing him.
From "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario
The agents also hallucinated reams of incoherent commands and text and were sloppy and did not cover their tracks well.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Last year, a Los Angeles attorney was fined for submitting a filing full of legal citations that were hallucinated by ChatGPT.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026
And then ‘oh, no, it hallucinated and deleted all my emails’ or worse,” said CrowdStrike Chief Technology Officer Elia Zaitsev.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026
"Many of these manipulated images have the hallmarks of imperfect AI-generation: odd angles, blurred details, and hallucinated features that don't align with reality," Africk told AFP.
From Barron's ● Mar. 9, 2026
“The Dauntless serum gives hallucinated realities, Candor’s gives the truth, Amity’s gives peace, Erudite’s gives death—” At this, Tris visibly shudders, but Johanna continues as if it didn’t happen.
From "Allegiant" by Veronica Roth
"This risk of a model making errors or hallucinating cannot be fully avoided in any technical way," said Munich Re's head of AI insurance, Michael von Gablenz.
From Barron's ● Mar. 15, 2026
But AI large language models can make mistakes, or even make things up - known as "hallucinating".
From BBC ● Mar. 3, 2026
Participants in the second schizophrenia group, those without recent hallucinations, showed brain responses that fell between the healthy group and the hallucinating group.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 23, 2026
I have yet to see any implementation of A.I. that I could consider either general-purpose or foundational, and I think it’s absurd to look at the hallucinating chatbots and inaccurate A.I.
From Slate ● Nov. 22, 2025
“I know you’ll think I’m crazy. Maybe I dozed off, or maybe I’m so worn out I’m hallucinating, but I think I saw a big spotted cat running along my side. Looked like a leopard.”
From "Storm Runners" by Roland Smith
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
