mirage
mih-RAZH
The optical illusion produced by light refracting through layers of air at different temperatures, bending the image of the sky down onto the ground so that the desert appears to hold water. A mirage is not a hallucination — it is real light, really bending. The physics is clean. Only the conclusion is wrong.
Etymology
French, from se mirer, to be reflected, ultimately from Latin mirare, to wonder at, to look at.
*
Surprise Me With a Word