gloze
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡləʊz/
rhymes: -əʊz
homophone: glows
Forms: form: glozes
form: glozing
form: glozed
form: glozed
Etymology: From Middle English glosen, from Old French gloser, from Medieval Latin glossa. More at gloss.
Senses: examples: text: Heaven, that I had thy head! he has found the meaning:
But I will gloze with him.
ref: c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry Gosson, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: Of what were generative organs made? / And for what profit were those creatures wrought? / [...] / Gloze as you will and plead the explanation / That they were only made for the purgation / Of urine, little things of no avail / Except to know a female from a male […]
ref: 1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 279:
glosses: To extenuate, explain away, gloss over.
examples: text: […] looke to see the throne where you should sit,
To floate in bloud, and at thy wanton head,
The glozing head of thy base minion throwne.
ref: 1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
text: So gloz’d the Tempter, and his Proem tun’d;
Into the Heart of Eve his words made way,
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 549-551:
text: 1810, Joanna Baillie, The Family Legend: A Tragedy, Act 5, Scene 2, pages 126-127.
As he pretended, struck, then stern and silent,
Till presently assuming, like his father,
A courtesy minute and over-studied,
He glozed us with his thanks:
glosses: To use flattering language.
examples: text: On this ground it is that Christianity works its way in Christianizing a community—if only it have free scope. It does this, not by glozing the evil that is in the world; not by extenuating, or by exaggerating the damage which human nature has sustained; but it does so by raising, in all minds, the ideal of human nature […]
ref: 1860, Isaac Taylor, “Ultimate Civilization”, in Ultimate Civilization, and Other Essays, London: Bell & Daldy, page 37:
text: 1906, E. A. Baker, Introduction to Moll Flanders and Roxana, G. Routledge & Sons (New York), p. xviii,
…his contempt for every romantic or sentimental motive that would gloze over real causes, and represent the conduct of human beings rather as we would have it to be than as it is…
text: The Brookers never called these biscuits biscuits. They always referred to them reverently as ‘cream crackers’—‘Have another cream cracker, Mr Reilly. You’ll like a cream cracker with your cheese’—thus glozing over the fact that there was only cheese for supper.
ref: 1937, George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, Part I, Chapter 1:
glosses: To smooth over; to palliate by specious explanation.
examples: text: The scanty light glozed them with the glory of day, and, forgetful of pain and thirst and hunger, and of the menace of death, they sank upon the floor and cried, keeping fast hold of each other the while.
ref: 1880, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Book 6, Chapter 2:
glosses: To give a shine to (something or someone).
Derived terms: glozer
glozingly
unglozed