blench

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English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English blench and blenchen, from Old English blenċan (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-Germanic *blankijaną (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ-. Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).[1]

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

  1. (intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
    • a. 1870, William Cullen Bryant, The Battle-Field:
      Blench not at thy chosen lot.
    • 1820, Francis Jeffrey, “Life of Curran”, in The Edinburgh Review May 1820:
      This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfilment.
    • 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King:
      Suddenly the great beast beat its hideous wings. […] Again it leaped into the air, and then swiftly fell down upon Éowyn, shrieking, striking with beak and claw. Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings […]
    • 1964 July, “The mythology of monorails”, in Modern Railways, page 57:
      Even a case-hardened monorailist must blench at the thought of the storm such a proposition would create.
    • 1998, Andrew Hurley (translator), Jorge Louis Borges, "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrnth", Collected Fictions, Penguin Putnam, p.255
      "This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."
  2. (intransitive, of the eye) To quail.
  3. (transitive) To deceive; cheat.
  4. (transitive) To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
    • 2012 January 13, Polly Toynbee, “Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks”, in The Guardian:
      Yesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench.
  5. (transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
  6. (intransitive) To fly off; to turn aside.
Derived terms

Noun

blench (plural blenches)

  1. A deceit; a trick.
  2. A sidelong glance.

Descendants

Etymology 2

From Old French blanchir (“to bleach”).

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

  1. (obsolete) To blanch.
    • 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 284:
      The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.

References

  1. ^ “blench”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Middle English

Noun

blench

  1. A deceit; a trick.
    • c. 1210, MS. Cotton Caligula A IX f.246.
      Feir weder turneð ofte into reine;
      An wunderliche hit makeð his blench.
      (please add an English translation of this usage example)
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