glimpse

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English

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WOTD – 9 October 2024

Etymology

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The verb is derived from earlier glimse (obsolete), from Middle English glimsen (“to dazzle; to glisten; to glance with the eyes”),[1] possibly from Old English *glimsian, from Proto-West Germanic *glimmisōjan, from Proto-Germanic *glimō, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to shine”).[2] Doublet of glimmer.

The noun is derived from the verb.[3]

cognates

Pronunciation

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Verb

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glimpse (third-person singular simple present glimpses, present participle glimpsing, simple past and past participle glimpsed)

  1. (transitive)
    1. To see or view (someone, or something tangible) briefly and incompletely.
      • c. 1838 (date written), Emmeline Stuart Wortley, “Sonnet”, in Sonnets, Written Chiefly during a Tour through Holland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Hungary, London: Joseph Rickerby, […], published 1839, →OCLC, page 99:
        Morning!—the Vestal Mother of the Sun / Seem'st thou to be, since from thy bosom born, / (Thou that first glimpsest—like a white-stoled nun!—) / He springeth forth—Oh! thou triumphal Morn!— / His race of glory and of joy to run; […]
      • 1931 August, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness. Chapter 8.”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume XVIII, number 1, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, page 67, column 2:
        Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race—as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed.
      • 2008, David Pierce, “Saying Goodbye in ‘Eveline’: Emigration · The Language of ‘Eveline’”, in Reading Joyce, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2013, →ISBN, page 103:
        The illumined portholes that Eveline [in Eveline (1904) by James Joyce] glimpses mean that the night is drawing in, that the ship will be sailing into the dark. 'Illumined' also carries its own gothic charge, and what she glimpses is not therefore a passenger ship but a ship of death, more foreboding than inviting.
    2. (figurative) To perceive (something intangible) briefly and incompletely.
      I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.
      • 1861, Andrew M‘Ewen, “Avalande, a Romaunt”, in Avalande. Fyttes and Fancyings, London: Charles H. Clarke, […], →OCLC, page 16:
        What memories? / The pure love thoughts and who may know / Thou glimpsest from the long ago?
      • 1871, James Russell Lowell, “My Garden Acquaintance”, in My Study Windows, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 5:
        I seem to glimpse something of this familiar weakness in Mr. [Gilbert] White.
      • 1912 November, Florence Earle Coates, “Cendrillon”, in The Unconquered Air and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], →OCLC, stanza 2, page 27:
        A hope that, glimpsed, must fade; / A form, illusion made, / That, vanishing, shall come no more again!
      • 2000 June 17, Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”, in America‎[1], volume 182, number 21:
        To glimpse the actual woman behind these texts in any kind of full and adequate way is impossible. New studies of the political, economic, social and cultural fabric of first-century Palestine, however, enable us to fill in aspects of her life in broad strokes.
  2. (intransitive)
    1. Chiefly followed by at or upon: to look at briefly and incompletely; to glance.
      • 1855 August 12 (date written), Nathaniel Hawthorne, “August 12th. [1855.]”, in Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, volume I, Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1870, →OCLC, page 249:
        The door always opens directly into the kitchen, without any vestibule; and, glimpsing in, you see that a cottager's life must be the very plainest and homeliest that ever was lived by men and women.
    2. To shine with a faint, unsteady light; to glimmer, to shimmer.
      Synonyms: glitter; see also Thesaurus:glisten
      • a. 1548 (date written), [Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey], “The Forsaken Louer Describeth and Forsaketh Loue”, in Songes and Sonettes, London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC, folio 11, verso:
        O Lothſome place where I / Haue ſene and herd my dere / When in my hart her eye / Hath made her thought appere / By glimſing with ſuch grace / As fortune it ne would, / That laſten any ſpace, / Betwene vs lenger ſhould.
      • 1576, George Gascoigne, The Steele Glas. A Satyre […], London: […] Henrie Binneman, for Richarde Smith, →OCLC, signature C.j., verso:
        [O]ur curious yeares can finde / The chriſtal glas, vvhich glimſeth braue & bright, / And ſhevves the thing, much better than it is, / Beguylde vvith foyles, of ſundry ſubtil ſights, / So that they ſeeme, and couet not to be.
    3. (archaic or poetic) To appear or start to appear, especially faintly or unclearly; to dawn.
      • 1605, Michaell Draiton [i.e., Michael Drayton], “The Fifth Booke of the Barrons Warres”, in Poems: […], London: […] [Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] Ling, →OCLC, stanza 45, page 113:
        Straitvvaies on heapes the thronging cloudes ariſe, / As though the heauen vvere angry vvith the night, / Deformed ſhadovves, glimpſing in his ſight / As darkenes, for it vvould more darkened be, / Through thoſe poore crannies forcde it ſelfe to ſee.
    4. (rare) Sometimes followed by out: to provide a brief and incomplete look.

Conjugation

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Conjugation of glimpse
infinitive (to) glimpse
present tense past tense
1st-person singular glimpse glimpsed
2nd-person singular glimpse, glimpsest† glimpsed, glimpsedst†
3rd-person singular glimpses, glimpseth† glimpsed
plural glimpse
subjunctive glimpse glimpsed
imperative glimpse —
participles glimpsing glimpsed

†Archaic or obsolete.

Alternative forms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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glimpse (plural glimpses)

  2. Chiefly followed by of: a brief and incomplete look.
    Synonyms: glance, peek, gander
    Hyponyms: (of written things) skim; scan, perusal (ambiguous)
    I only got a glimpse of the car, so I can tell you the colour but not the registration number.
  3. (archaic) A brief, sudden flash of light; a glimmer.
  4. (figurative)
    1. A faint or imprecise idea; an inkling.
      • 1836, [Ralph Waldo Emerson], “Prospects”, in Nature, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 86:
        Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion.
      • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 185:
        Let there be thistles, there are grapes; / If old things, there are new; / Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, / Yet glimpses of the true.
    2. (rare) A brief, unspecified amount of time; a moment.
      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:moment
      • 1809–1818 (date written), Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the First.”, in Thomas Moore, editor, The Works of Lord Byron: […], volume VIII, London: John Murray, […], published 1832, →OCLC, footnote 2, page 21:
        […] Alwin smiled, / When aught that from his young lips archly fell / The gloomy film from Harold's eye beguiled; / And pleased for a glimpse appeared the woeful Childe.
  5. (obsolete) A faint (and often temporary) appearance; a tinge.
    Synonyms: glimmer, hint, trace

Alternative forms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “glimsen, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ Compare “glimpse, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “glimpse, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  3. ^ “glimpse, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2024; “glimpse, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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