Meaning of hallucinate in English

hallucinate

/həˈluː.sɪ.neɪt/ us

/həˈluː.sə.neɪt/

to seem to see, hear, feel, or smell something that does not exist, usually because of a health condition or because you have taken a drug:

He hadn't slept for several days and was hallucinating through exhaustion and dehydration.

He began hallucinating and hearing voices.

She hallucinated a person talking to her when no one was there.

When an artificial intelligence (= a computer system that has some of the qualities that the human brain has, such as the ability to produce language in a way that seems human) hallucinates, it produces false information:

LLMs are notorious for hallucinating – generating completely false answers, often supported by fictitious citations.

The latest version of the chatbot is greatly improved but it will still hallucinate facts.

More examplesFewer examples

They became ill from oxygen deprivation, causing them to hallucinate.
After the crash, she even hallucinated once while in her car that she was back in the plane.
Why do generative AI tools hallucinate?
They warned that large language models are prone to hallucinate text.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Dreaming

See more results »

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Computer concepts

(Definition of hallucinate from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

hallucinate | American Dictionary

hallucinate

verb [ I ]

/həˈlu·səˌneɪt/

Add to word list Add to word list

to see or hear something that does not exist:

Police said the suspect was yelling incoherent statements as if he was hallucinating.

hallucination

noun [ C/U ] us

/həˌlu·səˈneɪ·ʃən/

[ C ] His fever was so high he was having hallucinations.

(Definition of hallucinate from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of hallucinate

hallucinate

He likens seeing an after-image to hallucinating an elephant.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

He had visual hallucinations of being home and became scared when he realized he was hallucinating.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Because the authors can imagine the infant experiencing hallucinated emotions and fictive kinesthetic sensations does not demonstrate the relationship, it postulates the answer instead.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

People without mental illness can hallucinate their dead relative's voice or presence in the context of intense yearning and searching for the deceased.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Synaptic elimination, neurodevelopment, and the mechanism of hallucinated "voices" in schizophrenia.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Someone who is hallucinating an object may experience that object as real.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This suggests that the hallucinated, delusional, disoriented, and paramnestic quality of dream cognition may be associated with inhibition of these structures during sleep.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Those who hallucinate more frequently tend not to function quite so adequately.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

With the addition of these two simple words, then, the character has made a rather drastic conversion from hallucinating to being painfully aware of her unfortunate circumstances.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If the stimulation due to the object did not change in that way, then you would not be seeing the object - you might, for example, be hallucinating it.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

As has been mentioned, those who are hallucinating or who are high on solvents are likely to commit offences.

From the

Hansard archive