You can think of it like this: you reach out to grab something and your hand closes on air. It was there a second ago, and now it has slipped past you. Elusive describes the thing that keeps escaping your reach — whether your hand, your effort, or your mind is what does the reaching.
From the word’s history
From Latin eludo (to parry a blow, to dodge, to deceive), formed from ex- (away) plus ludo (to play). The original picture is a fencer playfully sidestepping a strike rather than blocking it — the blow lands on nothing.
來自拉丁文 eludo（閃避對方的攻擊、躲開、騙過），由 ex-（離開）加上 ludo（玩、遊戲）組成。最早的畫面比較像擊劍時對手不硬擋，而是輕巧地側身一閃，讓你這一劍刺了個空——「像在跟你玩」的躲。這個「打不到、抓不著」的閃避感，正好接上現代 elusive 的三種用法：動物躲著你、成功躲著你、意思躲著你。
Latin elusus / eludo (ex- + ludo), as given in the entry's origin note
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原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
elusiveadj/ɪˈl(j)uː.sɪv/
- 1
Evading capture, comprehension or remembrance.
- The elusive criminal was arrested
- The temporary elusive goal / To reach the solace, to feed once more upon the synthetic reaper of loss / No matter the outcome, the cost
- 2
Difficult to make precise.
- A precise definition of diarrhea is elusive
- Charley chased the elusive idea through all the nooks and crannies of his drowning consciousness.
- 3
Rarely seen.
- While you're sniffing the trunks of the ponderosas to see if they're butterscotch, vanilla, strawberry, or the elusive chocolate variety, watch for Brown Creepers, an elusive variety of bird.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。