What is it called when an author makes reference to something without explicitly stating it?

Hint: Literary devices include instruments that help an author in expressing a hidden significance further than what appears upon the few pages. Together with characters and storyline, literary devices boost a tale and provoke contemplation to identity, culture, as well as what it the deeper meaning to being human. "The objective of such a tool is to grab the reader ’s attention, and to be able to convey an insight gently and elegantly," suggests another interpretation of the given question.

Complete answer:
The word that we are looking for here would be ‘an allusion’. Allusion is often a figure of speech under which a hidden or implicit reference is made to a situation or an object from some kind of different setting. Here ‘allusion’ is in fact a literary device that commonly authors utilize to grab the attention of their fellow readers. Remember that literary devices generally comprise instruments that help an author in expressing a hidden significance further than what appears upon the few pages.

An author's allusion used here is a specific or implied description to an individual, location, or object. It may be a documentary, a well-known lecture, a film, theatrical, a book, or can be some well-known case, among other things. This device is used to draw the audience, express a concept subtly and succinctly, indicate the cultural relevance of doing something, and put things into perspective for the done piece.


Note: The verb form of “allusion” is “to allude.” So alluding to something is the same thing as making an allusion to it. For example: You are acting like such a Scrooge! Alluding to Dickens's A Christmas Carol, this line means that the person is being miserly and selfish, just like the character Scrooge from the story.