# gloss
## English
### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ɡlɒs/
* (General American) IPA: /ɡlɔs/
* (cot–caught merger) IPA: /ɡlɑs/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɒs, -ɔːs

### Etymology 1

Probably from a North Germanic language, compare Icelandic glossi (“spark, flame”), glossa (“to flame”); or perhaps from dialectal Dutch gloos (“a glow, flare”), related to West Frisian gloeze (“a glow”), Middle Low German glȫsen (“to smoulder, glow”), German glosen (“to smoulder”); ultimately from Proto-Germanic *glus- (“to glow, shine”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰel- (“to flourish; be green or yellow”). More at glow.

#### Noun

gloss (usually uncountable, plural glosses)
* A surface shine or luster.
    Synonyms: brilliance, gleam, luster, sheen, shine
* (figuratively) A superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
    Synonyms: façade, front, veneer.
** 1770, [Oliver] Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, a Poem, London: […] W[illiam] Griffin, […], →OCLC:To me more dear, congenial to my heart, / One native charm than all the gloss of art.
** 2013 September 7, Daniel Taylor, “Danny Welbeck leads England's rout of Moldova but hit by Ukraine ban”, in The Guardian‎:Hodgson may now have to bring in James Milner on the left and, on that basis, a certain amount of gloss was taken off a night on which Welbeck scored twice but barely celebrated either before leaving the pitch angrily complaining to the Slovakian referee.

##### Derived terms

* degloss
* ethnic gloss
* glossism
* glossist
* glossless
* glossmeter
* glossography
* gloss paper
* glossy
* glost
* high-gloss
* isogloss
* nongloss
* semigloss
* ungloss

##### Related terms

* glow

##### Translations
#### Verb

gloss (third-person singular simple present glosses, present participle glossing, simple past and past participle glossed)
* (transitive) To give a gloss or sheen to.
    Synonyms: polish, shine
* (transitive) To make (something) attractive by deception
** 1722, Ambrose Philips, The Briton:You have the art to gloss the foulest cause.
* (intransitive) To become shiny.
* (transitive, idiomatic) Used in a phrasal verb: gloss over (“to cover up a mistake or crime, to treat something with less care than it deserves”).

#### Derived terms

* misgloss
* overgloss
* regloss

##### Translations
### Etymology 2

From Middle English glosse, glose, from Late Latin glōssa (“obsolete or foreign word requiring explanation”), from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, “language”). Doublet of glossa.

#### Noun

gloss (plural glosses)
* (countable) A brief explanatory note or translation of a foreign, archaic, technical, difficult, complex, or uncommon expression, inserted after the original, in the margin of a document, or between lines of a text.
    Synonyms: gloze, annotation
    Hypernyms: explanation, note, marginalia
** 1684, Samuel Butler, Hudibras:All this, without a gloss or comment, / He would unriddle in a moment.
** 2021, Mary Wellesley, The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts, page 9:He was a prolific annotator - writing around fifty thousand glosses in as many as twenty manuscripts.
* (countable) Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
* (countable, obsolete) An expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
* (countable) An extensive commentary on some text.
    Synonyms: commentary, discourse, discussion
* (countable, law, US) An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
** 1979, American Bar Foundation., Annotated code of professional responsibility, page ix:This volume is thus not a narrowly defined treatment of the Code of Professional Responsibility but rather represents a "common law" gloss on it.
** 2007, Bruce R. Hopkins., The law of tax-exempt organizations., page 76:Judicial Gloss on Test [section title]
* (lexicography) A definition or explanation of a word sense.
** 2007, Martin Rajman, Speech and Language Engineering, pages 244 text=For instance the concept {cat, true cat} has the following gloss: / "feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and being unable to roar".:
** 2011, Gabriele Stein, “The linking of lemma to gloss in Elyot's Dictionary (1538)”, in Olga Timoleeva, Tanja Saily, editor, Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie:Dictionary entries comprise two essential parts, the headword ('lemma') and the author's explanation ('gloss').
** 2019, Jonathan Kline, A Proverb a Day in Biblical Hebrew, page xi:Therefore, for many of the Hebrew words in this book, I have provided more than one gloss (using a slash to separate alternatives, or double slashes when a single slash would be ambiguous), in order to give you a sense of the possible meanings of nuances […] .

##### Derived terms

* beglossed

##### Related terms

* glossarium
* glossary
* glossator
* glossology

##### Translations
### Etymology 3

From Middle English glossen, glosen, from Old French gloser and Medieval Latin glossāre.

#### Verb

gloss (third-person singular simple present glosses, present participle glossing, simple past and past participle glossed)
* (transitive) To add a gloss to (a text).
    Synonyms: annotate, mark up

##### Derived terms

* gloss over

##### Translations
### Further reading

* gloss (material appearance) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* gloss (annotation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* “gloss”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “gloss”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
* “gloss”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

### Anagrams

* slogs

## Portuguese
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English (lip) gloss.

### Pronunciation

* (Brazil) IPA: /ˈɡlɔ(j)s/ [ˈɡlɔ(ɪ̯)s]
* (Brazil) IPA: /ˈɡlɔ(j)s/ [ˈɡlɔ(ɪ̯)s]
** (Rio de Janeiro) IPA: /ˈɡlɔ(j)ʃ/ [ˈɡlɔ(ɪ̯)ʃ]
* (Portugal) IPA: /ˈɡlɔʃ/
* Rhymes: (Brazil) -ɔs, (Portugal) -ɔʃ

### Noun

gloss m (uncountable)
* lip gloss (cosmetic product)

### Further reading

* “gloss”, in Dicionário infopédia da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003–2025