glamour
/ˈɡlæmɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.51 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Originally, enchantment; magic charm; especially, the effect of a spell that causes one to see objects in a form that differs from reality, typically to make filthy, ugly, or repulsive things seem beauteous.
Uncountable
noun
Any excitement, appeal, or attractiveness associated with a person, place, or thing; that which makes something appealing.
Uncountable
noun
Any artificial interest in, or association with, objects, or persons, through which they appear delusively magnified or glorified.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "They often murmur to themselves, they speak To one another seldom, for their woe Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak Itself abroad; and if at whiles it grow To frenzy which must rave, none heeds the clamour, Unless there waits some victim of like glamour, To rave in turn, who lends attentive show."
- "glamour magazines; a glamour model"
- "The idea of being a movie star has lost its glamour for me."
- "“The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven’t been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour’s off.”"
- "Boys have not lost their love for adventure, and still have `itchy feet.' Many are seeking glamor jobs, want to be writers, detectives, seamen."
- "When the golden October comes, with its witching of hazy air that makes a glamour for all things and any landscape, we shall see these offspring of poetic myth stretch out beside the creeks, breaking the tender hulls for their magical chincapins, and feeding on them and on the dreams of which they are the talismans."
Etymology
Borrowed from Scots glamour (“magic”), alteration of Middle English gramere (“grammar”), from Old French gramaire. Doublet of glamoury, gramarye, grammar, and grimoire. A connection has also been suggested with Old Norse glámr (“the moon", also "the name of a ghost”, poetic byname, literally “the pale one”) and glámsýni (“glamour, illusion”, literally “glam-sight”). From Grettir's Saga aka Grettis Saga, one of the Sagas of Icelanders, after the hero has been cursed by Glam, aka Glamr: "...he was become so fearsome a man in the dark, that he durst go nowhither alone after nightfall, for then he seemed to see all kinds of horrors. And that has fallen since into a proverb, that "Glam lends eyes", or gives Glamsight to those who see things nowise as they are."
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: gramere, gramaire, glámr
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɡlæmɚ/
- British English: /ˈɡlæmə/