GC: n
S: WMO – https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/en/mirage.html (last access: 13 April 2025); T&D – https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/mirage-vs-optical.html (last access: 13 April 2025).
N: 1. “optical illusion of objects reflected in a sheet of water in hot, sandy deserts,” 1800, in translations of French works, from French mirage (1753), from se mirer “to be reflected,” from Latin mirare (see mirror (n.)). Or the French word is from Latin mirus “wonderful” (see miracle).
The similarity to Arabic mi’raj has been noted, but the usual sense of that word is “ladder, stairs; climb, ascent,” and the resemblance appears to be coincidental. The standard Arabic for “a desert mirage” is sarāb, which, via Old French, gave English its earlier word for “mirage,” zarab (mid-15c.).
The figurative sense of “deceptiveness of appearance, a delusive seeming” is by 1812. The phenomenon is produced by excessive bending of light rays through layers of air of different densities, producing distorted, displaced, or inverted images.
2. mirage, in optics, the deceptive appearance of a distant object or objects caused by the bending of light rays (refraction) in layers of air of varying density.
- Under certain conditions, such as over a stretch of pavement or desert air heated by intense sunshine, the air rapidly cools with elevation and therefore increases in density and refractive power. Sunlight reflected downward from the upper portion of an object—for example, the top of a camel in the desert—will be directed through the cool air in the normal way. Although the light would not be seen ordinarily because of the angle, it curves upward after it enters the rarefied hot air near the ground, thus being refracted to the observer’s eye as though it originated below the heated surface. A direct image of the camel is seen also because some of the reflected rays enter the eye in a straight line without being refracted. The double image seems to be that of the camel and its upside-down reflection in water. When the sky is the object of the mirage, the land is mistaken for a lake or sheet of water.
- Sometimes, as over a body of water, a cool, dense layer of air underlies a heated layer. An opposite phenomenon will then prevail, in which light rays will reach the eye that were originally directed above the line of sight. Thus, an object ordinarily out of view, like a boat below the horizon, will be apparently lifted into the sky. This phenomenon is called looming.
3. Atmospheric Physics: mirage
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Optical refraction phenomenon in the atmosphere consisting essentially of steady or wavering, single or multiple, upright or inverted, vertically enlarged or reduced, images of distant objects which are displaced from their true positions.
4. Collocations:
- verb + mirage: see | chase (figurative) Perhaps we are all just chasing a mirage.
- mirage + verb: vanish.
5. Cultural Interrelation:
- Fata Morgana. 1818, literally “Fairy Morgana,” mirage especially common in the Strait of Messina, Italy, from Morgana, the “Morgan le Fay” of Anglo-French poetry, sister of King Arthur, located in Calabria by Norman settlers. Morgan is Welsh, “sea-dweller.” There is perhaps, too, here an influence of Arabic marjan, literally “pearl,” also a fem. proper name, popularly the name of a sorceress.
- Mirage (1965), American movie directed by Edward Dmytryk.
S: 1. Etymonline – https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=mirage (last access: 13 April 2025). 2. EncBrit – https://www.britannica.com/topic/mirage-optical-illusion (last access: 13 April 2025). 3. TERMIUM PLUS – https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=1&srchtxt=mirage&index=alt&codom2nd_wet=1#resultrecs (last access: 13 April 2025). 4. OCD – https://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=mirage (last access: 13 April 2025). 5. Etymonline – https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=mirage (last access: 13 April 2025); IMDb – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059448/ (last access: 13 April 2025).
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