glimpse
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡlɪm(p)s/
rhymes: -ɪmps
Forms: form: glimpses
form: glimpsing
form: glimpsed
form: glimpsed
form: no-table-tags
form: glossary
form: glimpse
form: glimpse
form: glimpsed
form: glimpse
form: glimpsest
form: glimpsed
form: glimpsedst
form: glimpses
form: glimpseth
form: glimpsed
form: glimpse
form: glimpsed
form: glimpse
form: glimpsed
form: glimpse
form: -
form: glimpsing
form: glimpsed
form: glinse
form: glympse
form: glymse
Etymology: The verb is derived from earlier glimse (obsolete), from Middle English glimsen (“to dazzle; to glisten; to glance with the eyes”), possibly from Old English *glimsian, from Proto-West Germanic *glimmisōjan, from Proto-Germanic *glimō, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to shine”). Doublet of glimmer.
The noun is derived from the verb.
Cognates
Middle Dutch glinsen (modern Dutch glinsteren (“to glint, glitter, shimmer, sparkle; to glance”), glimmen (“to gleam, shine”))
Middle High German glimsen (“to glow, smoulder”), glinsen (“to glimmer, shine”)
Middle Low German glinsen, glintzen, glinzen (“to shimmer, shine”)
Senses: examples: text: Morning!—the Vestal Mother of the Sun / Seem'st thou to be, since from thy bosom born, / (Thou that first glimpsest—like a white-stoled nun!—) / He springeth forth—Oh! thou triumphal Morn!— / His race of glory and of joy to run; […]
ref: c. 1838 (date written), Emmeline Stuart Wortley, “Sonnet”, in Sonnets, Written Chiefly during a Tour through Holland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Hungary, London: Joseph Rickerby, […], published 1839, →OCLC, page 99:
text: Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race—as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed.
ref: 1931 August, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness. Chapter 8.”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume XVIII, number 1, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, page 67, column 2:
text: The illumined portholes that Eveline [in Eveline (1904) by James Joyce] glimpses mean that the night is drawing in, that the ship will be sailing into the dark. 'Illumined' also carries its own gothic charge, and what she glimpses is not therefore a passenger ship but a ship of death, more foreboding than inviting.
ref: 2008, David Pierce, “Saying Goodbye in ‘Eveline’: Emigration · The Language of ‘Eveline’”, in Reading Joyce, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2013, →ISBN, page 103:
glosses: To see or view (someone, or something tangible) briefly and incompletely.
examples: text: I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.
text: What memories? / The pure love thoughts and who may know / Thou glimpsest from the long ago?
ref: 1861, Andrew M‘Ewen, “Avalande, a Romaunt”, in Avalande. Fyttes and Fancyings, London: Charles H. Clarke, […], →OCLC, page 16:
text: I seem to glimpse something of this familiar weakness in Mr. [Gilbert] White.
ref: 1871, James Russell Lowell, “My Garden Acquaintance”, in My Study Windows, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 5:
text: A hope that, glimpsed, must fade; / A form, illusion made, / That, vanishing, shall come no more again!
ref: 1912 November, Florence Earle Coates, “Cendrillon”, in The Unconquered Air and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], →OCLC, stanza 2, page 27:
text: To glimpse the actual woman behind these texts in any kind of full and adequate way is impossible. New studies of the political, economic, social and cultural fabric of first-century Palestine, however, enable us to fill in aspects of her life in broad strokes.
ref: 2000 June 17, Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”, in America, volume 182, number 21:
glosses: To perceive (something intangible) briefly and incompletely.
examples: text: The door always opens directly into the kitchen, without any vestibule; and, glimpsing in, you see that a cottager's life must be the very plainest and homeliest that ever was lived by men and women.
ref: 1855 August 12 (date written), Nathaniel Hawthorne, “August 12th. [1855.]”, in Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, volume I, Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1870, →OCLC, page 249:
glosses: Chiefly followed by at or upon: to look at briefly and incompletely; to glance.
examples: text: O Lothſome place where I / Haue ſene and herd my dere / When in my hart her eye / Hath made her thought appere / By glimſing with ſuch grace / As fortune it ne would, / That laſten any ſpace, / Betwene vs lenger ſhould.
ref: a. 1548 (date written), [Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey], “The Forsaken Louer Describeth and Forsaketh Loue”, in Songes and Sonettes, London: […] Richard Tottel, published 10 August 1557 (Gregorian calendar), →OCLC, folio 11, verso:
text: [O]ur curious yeares can finde / The chriſtal glas, vvhich glimſeth braue & bright, / And ſhevves the thing, much better than it is, / Beguylde vvith foyles, of ſundry ſubtil ſights, / So that they ſeeme, and couet not to be.
ref: 1576, George Gascoigne, The Steele Glas. A Satyre […], London: […] Henrie Binneman, for Richarde Smith, →OCLC, signature C.j., verso:
synonyms: word: glitter
word: coruscate
word: flash
word: gleam
word: glitter
word: glisten
word: luster
word: sheen
word: shimmer
word: shine
word: sparkle
glosses: To shine with a faint, unsteady light; to glimmer, to shimmer.
examples: text: Straitvvaies on heapes the thronging cloudes ariſe, / As though the heauen vvere angry vvith the night, / Deformed ſhadovves, glimpſing in his ſight / As darkenes, for it vvould more darkened be, / Through thoſe poore crannies forcde it ſelfe to ſee.
ref: 1630, Michaell Draiton [i.e., Michael Drayton], “The Fifth Booke of the Barrons Warres”, in Poems: […], London: […] [Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] Ling, →OCLC, stanza 45, page 113:
glosses: To appear or start to appear, especially faintly or unclearly; to dawn.
glosses: Sometimes followed by out: to provide a brief and incomplete look.
Derived terms: word: foreglimpse
word: glimpsable
word: glimpseable
word: glimpsed
word: glimpser
word: glimpsing
word: unglimpsed