Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To minimize or underplay; gloss.
  • intransitive verb To use flattery or cajolery.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To explain: expound; comment upon; same as gloss, transitive verb, 1.
  • To flatter; wheedle; caress; coax.
  • To put a fair face upon; gloss over; extenuate.
  • To use glosses; practise glossing: same as gloss, intransitive verb, 1.
  • To talk speciously and smoothly; use flattery.
  • noun Explanation; comment; gloss. See gloss, n.
  • noun Specious talk; flattery; adulation; idle words.
  • noun Specious show; gloss.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To smooth over; to palliate.
  • intransitive verb To flatter; to wheedle; to fawn; to talk smoothly.
  • intransitive verb To give a specious or false meaning; to ministerpret.
  • noun Flattery; adulation; smooth speech.
  • noun obsolete Specious show; gloss.

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

  • noun A comment in the margin.
  • noun Flattery.
  • noun False appearance.
  • noun A specious show, a deceit.
  • verb To extenuate, explain away, gloss over.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English glosen, to interpret, explain away, from Old French gloser, from glose, gloss; see gloss.]

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Examples

  • During the 19th century, "gloze" briefly took on the additional meaning "to brighten" (adapting the meaning of another, unrelated "gloss" referring to luster or brightness), but by the end of that century all uses of "gloze" had faded into relative obscurity.

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day 2010

  • Seek not to impute folly to the goddesses, in the attempt to gloze o'er thy own sin; never wilt thou persuade the wise.

    The Trojan Women 2008

  • What she wants, really, is to keep you entranced forever in the soft silly gloze of adolescence, to have you perpetually saying farewell to the warm womb but never once peeking out for just one look at reality.

    America's "literary flowering" was "a rebellion against what was thought of as academic, effete and indoors-y in English writing." Ann Althouse 2008

  • Seek not to impute folly to the goddesses, in the attempt to gloze o'er thy own sin; never wilt thou persuade the wise.

    The Trojan Women 2008

  • A gloss of genuine religious revulsion and sense of duty would have to gloze over the malice entailed.

    The Heretic's Apprentice Peters, Ellis, 1913- 1989

  • A gloss of genuine religious revulsion and sense of duty would have to gloze over the malice entailed.

    The Heretic's Apprentice Peters, Ellis, 1913- 1989

  • The speech of truth is simple, and those things which are just need not wily interpretations; for they have energy themselves; but the unjust speech, unsound in itself, requires cunning preparations to gloze it.

    The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. 480? BC-406 BC Euripides

  • Official attempts to gloze over the incident would have been amusing if they were not pathetic.

    Pan-Islam

  • The ham dip gaed up the lum in a gloze, an 'here was Sandy an' Dauvid's wife lyin 'i' the middle o 'a' the mairter o 'rubbitch.

    My Man Sandy J. B. Salmond

  • For vaunting that with his tongue he can well gloze over injustice, he dares to work deceit, but he is not over-wise.

    The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. 480? BC-406 BC Euripides

Comments

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  • A note in the margin.

    August 2, 2008

  • Gloze is noun meaning an explanatory note in the margin. Related to glossary perhaps?

    July 5, 2009