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gleam

Pronunciation: /ɡliːm/

The English word “gleam” has 10 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An appearance of light, especially one which is indistinct or small, or short-lived.
  2. An indistinct sign of something; a glimpse or hint.
  3. A bright, but intermittent or short-lived, appearance of something.
  4. A look of joy or liveliness on one's face.
  5. Sometimes as hot gleam: a warm ray of sunlight; also, a period of warm weather, for instance, between showers of rain.
  6. Brightness or shininess; radiance, splendour.

verb

  1. Chiefly in conjunction with an adverb: to cause (light) to shine.
  2. To shine, especially in an indistinct or intermittent manner; to glisten, to glitter.
  3. To be strongly but briefly apparent.
  4. Of a hawk or other bird of prey: to disgorge filth from its crop or gorge.

Etymology

From Middle English glem, gleam, gleme (“shaft of light; part of a comet’s tail; reflected sparkle; dawn; daylight; radiance (physical or spiritual); something fleeting”), from Old English glǣm (“gleam”), from Proto-Germanic *glaimiz (“brightness; splendour”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to shine”). Cognates * German Low German Gleem (“shine, luster, gloss”) * Faroese glæma (“gleam,…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.