glance
/ɡlæns/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.91 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Deare heart forbeare to glance thine eye aſide, / What needſt thou wound with cunning when thy might / Is more then my ore-preſt defence can bide?"
- "Vivian glanced a look, which would have been annihilation to any one, not a freeholder of five hundred acres."
- "He, however, blenched not a step, but glancing his severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros."
- "A horseman rode up as he spoke, and gave a letter. Claverhouse glanced it over, laughed scornfully, bade him tell his master to send his prisoners to Edinburgh, for there was no answer; […]"
- "The bink, with its usual arrangement of pewter and earthenware, which was most strictly and critically clean, glanced back the flame of the lamp merrily from one side of the apartment."
- "One morning as I lay in my bed, a ſtrong motion was ſuddenly glanced into my thoughts of going to London; I aroſe and betook me to the way, […]"
Etymology
The verb is derived from Late Middle English glenchen (“of a blow: to strike obliquely, glance; of a person: to turn quickly aside, dodge”) [and other forms], a blend of: * Old French glacier, glachier, glaichier (“to slide; to slip”) (whence also Middle English glacen (“of a blow: to strike obliquely, glance; to glide”)), from glace (“frozen water, ice”) (from Vulgar Latin *glacia, from Latin glaciēs (“ice”), of uncertain origin, + -ier (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs); and * Old French guenchir, ganchir (“to avoid; to change direction; to elude, evade”) [and other forms], from Proto-West Germanic *wankijan (“to move aside; to stagger, sway; to wave”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *weng- (“to bend”). The noun is derived from the verb. The sense "to look briefly (at something)" is probably due to partial conflation with Middle English glenten (“to look askance”)—the ancestor of English glint—in the Middle English period. This conflation may also have reinforced the medial -n-. See English glint
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɡlæns/
- British English: /ɡlɑːns/
Usage
Inflected Forms
glances (present, singular)
glancing (participle, present)
glanced (participle, past)
glanced (past)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
glanced (first person, past)
glancest (archaic, present)
glanced (past, second person)
glancedst (archaic, past)
glanceth (archaic, present)
glanced (past, singular)