glimpse

English

Alternative forms

• glinse
• glimse (obsolete)

Etymology

From earlier glimse, from Middle English glimsen (“to glisten, be dazzling, glance with the eyes”), akin to Middle High German glimsen (“to glow, smoulder”). Compare also Middle Dutch glinsen, Middle Low German glinsen, glintzen, glinzen (“to shine, shimmer”), Middle High German glinsen (“to shine, glimmer”), Dutch glinsteren (“to glitter, sparkle, shimmer, glint, glance”), Dutch glimmen (“to shine, gleam”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡlɪmps/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪmps

Noun

glimpse (plural glimpses)

1. A brief look, glance, or peek.

   I only got a glimpse of the car, so I can tell you the colour but not the registration number.

   • 1798, Samuel Rogers, An Epistle to a Friend:

     Here hid by shrub-wood, there by glimpses seen.

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

   • 1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 703:

     On the other hand, to arrive after dusk, when the multitude of garish little public-houses are lit up, giving glimpses of crowded jostling bars and taprooms, is an introduction to a fine city well calculated to affect even the most nonchalant.

   • 2023 June 29, City AM, London, page 18, column 2:

     An opening sequence, featuring a de-aged Ford playing a younger Indy, is a bold and nostalgic gambit, offering a glimpse of what you've missed.

2. (archaic) A sudden flash, a glimmer.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 257:

     Reuiſits thus the glimpſes of the Moone, / Making Night hidious? And we fooles of Nature,

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC:

     Light as the lightning glimpse they ran.

3. (figurative) A faint idea; an inkling.

Translations

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To see or view briefly or incompletely.

   Synonyms: perceive, notice, detect, espy, spot, catch sight of

   I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.

   • 1916, Florence Earle Coates, “Cendrillon”, in Poems, volume I:

     A hope that, glimpsed, must fade; / ⁠A form, illusion made, / That, vanishing, shall come no more again!

   • 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 8, in The Whisperer in Darkness:

     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.

2. (intransitive) To appear by glimpses.
   • 1596, Michael Drayton, “Mortimeriados. The Lamentable Ciuell Warres of Edward the Second and the Barrons.”, in J[ohn] Payne Collier, editor, Poems by Michael Drayton. , London: J B Nichols and Sons,  , published 1856, →OCLC, page 315:

     Straight waies on heaps the thrunging clouds doe rise, / As though the heauen were angry with the night, / Deformed shadowes glimpsing in his sight; […]

Translations

Anagrams

• megilps