Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A brief beam or flash of light: saw gleams of daylight through the cracks.
- n. A steady but subdued shining; a glow: the gleam of burnished gold.
- n. A brief or dim indication; a trace: a gleam of intelligence.
- v. To emit a gleam; flash or glow: "It shone with gold and gleamed with ivory” ( Edith Hamilton). See Synonyms at flash.
- v. To be manifested or indicated briefly or faintly.
- v. To cause to emit a flash of light.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Brightness; splendor.
- n. A flash of light; a beam; a ray; a small stream of light; a dim or subdued glow; hence, something conceived as analogous to a flash or beam of light.
- n. Specifically— A flash of lightning.
- n. A hot interval between showers.
- To dart or throw rays of light; glimmer; glitter; shine; dawn; hence, to appear suddenly and clearly, like a beam or flash of light.
- To glance; look.
- Synonyms Glisten, Glitter, etc. See glare, intransitive verb
- Same as glean.
- In falconry, to disgorge refuse from the stomach, as a hawk.
Wiktionary
- n. a small or indistinct shaft or stream of light.
- n. a glimpse or hint; an indistinct sign of something.
- n. brightness or shininess; splendor.
- v. To shine; to glitter; to glisten.
- v. To be briefly but strongly apparent.
- v. To disgorge filth, as a hawk.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To disgorge filth, as a hawk.
- n. A shoot of light; a small stream of light; a beam; a ray; a glimpse.
- n. Brightness; splendor.
- v. To shoot, or dart, as rays of light.
- v. To shine; to cast light; to glitter.
- v. To shoot out (flashes of light, etc.).
WordNet 3.0
- v. appear briefly
- n. an appearance of reflected light
- n. a flash of light (especially reflected light)
- v. be shiny, as if wet
- v. shine brightly, like a star or a light
Etymologies
- Middle English glem, from Old English glǣm; see ghel-2 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Because East Valley HS, despite its high tech gleam, is full of gangs. linus Says:”
“See what you can gleam from the latest footage posted over at You Tube through Michael Bay's site, bear with it as we get some Pirates stuff beforehand, but then it's all Transformers.”
“The bed, the mirror, the white jug and basin gleam like the sky outside.”
“Already, as I was crossing the house yard, I thought there was something familiar in the gleam from the fire, and when I opened the door, it flashed across my mind that I was going into our own cabin and that father and mother would be sitting by the hearth.”
“Shakespeare makes Portia exclaim, when she sees the light of a candle, the only light for the palaces of kings in her day, gleam from the window of her home, which she is approaching.”
“There was no light save a ruddy gleam from the kitchen on the depths of that dark passage which traversed the whole breadth of the house, and that which shone through the crevices of the dining-room door.”
“The town, beyond which shines the silver sea, is white as pearls in the moonlight, with here and there a yellow gleam from a lamp through an open door.”
“That light is neither the gleam from a cottage, nor yet a friendly man with a lanthorn, as you think, though, for the matter of that, the light is friendly enough to those who understand it.”
“All my co-workers, I bet, have sat at these tables at night, ordering platefuls of éclairs and perhaps even glasses of the cognac and champagne whose golden labels gleam behind the counter.”
“He was all guile, energy, and focus, seemingly indestructible but one of those professionals with what some would call a gleam in his eye who could talk any boy or green lieutenant through anything.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gleam’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Public List: Two by Fives
This is an experiment in public lists--something I've been thinking about for some time. The goal is to create a collection of short, powerful, evocative words.
This is an open list. A...icy, howl, hymn, thorn, fire, vile, mist, blunt, scum, dark, shot, gleam and 137 more...
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Especially
Being a list of words which have "especially" in their definitions.
wringing-machine, especially, device, field, scrip, hit, catch, take, buck, flip, effluvium, proselyte and 100 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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rays & x-rays
raised rays
cow-nosed ray, x-ray, roentgenogram, radiogram, sunray, tomograph, whipparee, oxeye, thulium, raster, moonbeam, robinia and 86 more...
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Dean Koontz Life Expectancy
Words I'm learning or investigating that I found by reading Life Expectancy (not all words are in the book).
chutzpah, luminous, torchieres, dunderheaded, inane, lummox, fox-trot, rumba, cha-cha, tango, swing, flub and 37 more...
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Qualities of Light
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Phonestheme: GL-, the Light Show
Grateful credit to http://reocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9783/phond1.html.
gleam, glitter, glisten, glint, glare, glow, glister, glitz, glimmer
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