Elusive and illusive sound very much alike in spoken speech. As with most sound-alikes, they mean quite different things. Both are adjectives.
Elusive (adj.) describes something that is fleeting, hard to pin down, vague, mysterious, as an elusive feeling one might have, obscure. The root verb is elude, which means to escape, disappear or evade. Ex. The interpretation of the dream was elusive.
Illusive (adj.) relates to the word illusion, fantasy, something that is not real, magic, false and unreal. Although illusive is correct, a better use of this adjective would be illusory. No matter: It still means deceptive, as an illusion. Ex. The so-called shortage and hence value of diamonds is an illusory phenomenon, created by those companies that wish to maintain their monopoly on the supply.
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