Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A feeble, unsteady light; a glimmer; a faint glow or gleam: as, a slight glimmering of sense.
  • noun A dim or vague view or notion; an inkling; a glimpse.

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

  • noun Faint, unsteady light; a glimmer.
  • noun A faint view or idea; a glimpse; an inkling.

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

  • verb Present participle of glimmer.

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

  • noun a slight suggestion or vague understanding

Etymologies

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Examples

  • How can it flatter any reasonable man to see himself set up in effigy, and his name glimmering on oiled paper!

    Chapter VI. Book III 1917

  • Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until — perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids — little Pearl awoke!

    The Scarlet Letter 2002

  • He spurred his mount to catch up to the knight, the sword glimmering magical light.

    Villains by Necessity Forward, Eve 1995

  • Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until—perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids—little Pearl awoke!

    VI. Pearl 1917

  • Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until -- perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids -- little Pearl awoke!

    The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834

  • Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until — perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids — little Pearl awoke!

    The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834

  • But as for the longer novel, in a blind and blundering way, constantly trapped and hindered by his want of genius and his want of taste, by his literary ill-breeding and other faults, he seems to have more of a "glimmering" of the real business than they have, or than any other Frenchman had before him.

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800 George Saintsbury 1889

  • “Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me too.

    Bleak House 2007

  • "Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me too.

    Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

  • "Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me too.

    Bleak House Charles Dickens 1841

Comments

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  • The self-involved comings and goings of humans. As always most are full of energy, ridelled with their own details, asimmer with schemes and regrets, fears, secrets, hungers, sins. Occasionally love. A very young dark haired couple came out of a deli, not dreamily or holding hands or in any way obviously rapt but deep in conversation and glimmering with the shared wealth of each other. My in-love heart tautened to see it. In love. Oh, indeed I have the condition.

    March 23, 2012