Hard to understand or identify

Usage examples of elusive.

I was staring up at the stars, thinking of the Gibson and McIlroy and that abo walking out alive, trying to picture what had really happened, my thoughts ranging and the truth elusive.

He bagged some urchins and sea cucumbers, but the crabs were elusive, and when he swam along the edge of the bay with his knife unsheathed to pry off the purple scallops, fierce currents threatened to drag him against the rocks.

It was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright.

And she, Clair Frankenstein, was going to prove it by accosting one of these elusive London vampires in its own home.

The pain in her eyes darkened his and when she latched onto his wrist with surprisingly strong hands, he was held by something elusive, something he felt he was close to understanding, or perhaps would never understand.

Elusive, dealers in anything that required no great effort, ears pricking for every rumor going, sometimes drunks, seldom druggers, sometimes burnt out, sometimes disaffected, subversive in a passive way.

Proximity, loneliness, an elusive flagrance she emanated, a lot of things accounted for my feelings, I told myself firmly, but not a physical attraction or even old-fashioned lust.

Seeing the stubborn look on her face, he poured out the tale of the elusive historical data on the heterochronic gene project.

He summarized his problems in retracing the origins of the heterochronic genes, told of his encounter with the warning bells in the file from the codicil and the elusive footage of the voracious underwater monster.

This is the voice of One who calls to us in the small illusions, the elusive encounters with small joys designed to speak of the gigantic joy for which we were created.

But this -perverse, oblique, its potential elusive but limitless - it resembled Lunaria herself.

The elusive specter had apparently never had sufficient identity for a legend to crystallize about it, and after a time the Boynes had laughingly set the matter down to their profit-and-loss account, agreeing that Lyng was one of the few houses good enough in itself to dispense with supernatural enhancements.

Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl, By maggoty motions in sickening line Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine, While there far above the steep cliffs of the street The stars sing a message elusive and sweet.

They developed a little gray matter, the neopallium, to deal with the elusive and ambiguous information that smells provide.

In any case, his mind was too busy to be seeking after an elusive neume, for he was about to report to a new captain, a man upon whom his comfort and ease of mind was to depend, to say nothing of his reputation, career and prospects of advancement.