Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of glitter.
  • adjective Brightly sparkling.
  • adjective figuratively Valuable, desirable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having brief brilliant points or flashes of light

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • "And, indeed, on a chair drawn up to the glittering inaugural table, M. de Charlus in person, never touching a card, oblivious of what was going on around him, incapable of observing that I had entered the room, seemed precisely a magician applying all the force of his will and reason to drawing a horoscope."

    --Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 119 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    February 4, 2009

  • "From the height we had now reached, the sea no longer appeared, as it did from Balbec, like an undulating range of hills, but on the contrary like the view, from a mountain-peak or from a road winding round its flank, of a blue-green glacier or a glittering plain situated at a lower level."

    --Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 401 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    March 8, 2009

  • "As when, in a stretch of country which one thinks one does not know and which in fact one has approached from a new direction, after turning a corner one finds oneself suddenly emerging on to a road every inch of which is familiar, but one had simply not been in the habit of approaching it that way, one suddenly says to oneself: "Why, this is the lane that leads to the garden gate of my friends the X----s; I'm only two minutes from their house," and there, indeed, is their daughter who has come out to greet one as one goes by; so, all of a sudden, I found myself, in the midst of this music that was new to me, right in the heart of Vinteuil's sonata; and, more marvellous than any girl, the little phrase, sheathed, harnessed in silver, glittering with brilliant sonorities, as light and soft as silken scarves, came to me, recognisable in this new guise."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 331-332 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    January 20, 2010

  • "But this knowledge, which the shrewdest perceptions of the mind would not have given me, had now been brought to me, hard, glittering, strange, like a crystallised salt, by the abrupt reaction of pain."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 564 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    February 15, 2010

  • "When, at ten o'clock in the morning, my shutters were thrown open, I saw blazing there, instead of the gleaming black marble into which the slates of Saint-Hilaire used to turn, the golden angel on the campanile of St Mark's. Glittering in a sunlight which made it almost impossible to keep one's eyes upon it, this angel promised me, with its outstretched arms, for the moment when I appeared on the Piazzetta half an hour later, a joy more certain than any that it could ever in the past have been bidden to announce to men of good will."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 844 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    February 22, 2010

  • "But at the same time (because of the always urban character of the impressions which Venice gives almost in the open sea, on those waters whose ebb and flow makes itself felt twice daily, and which alternately cover at high tide and uncover and low tide the splendid outside stairs of the palaces), as we should have done in Paris on the boulevards, in the Champs-Elysées, in the Bois, in any wide and fashionable avenue, we passed the most elegant women in the hazy evening light, almost all foreigners, who, languidly reclining against the cushions of their floating carriages, followed one another in procession, stopped in front of a palace where they had a friend to call on, sent to inquire whether she was at home, and while, as they waited for the answer, they prepared to leave a card just in case, as they would have done at the door of the Hôtel de Guermantes, turned to their guidebooks to find out the period and the style of the palace, being shaken the while, as upon the crest of a blue wave, by the wash of the glittering, swirling water, which took alarm at finding itself pent between the dancing gondola and the resounding marble."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 852-853 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    February 22, 2010

  • "People still remembered that the most grandiose and glittering receptions in Paris, as brilliant as those given by the Princesse de Guermantes, had been those of Mme de Marsantes, Saint-Loup's mother."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 912 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    February 23, 2010

  • "It was the belief that Robert had been loved, and loved for so long, by Rachel that had made her desire him, had made her reject more glittering matches; it seemed that he was making a sort of concession to her in marrying her."

    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 930 of the Modern Library paperback edition

    February 23, 2010

  • My adjectival use: 'He tried to count the glistening stars.'

    August 22, 2011

  • Nup, that's not a use of glittering.

    August 22, 2011