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blaze

nounverbnounverbverbnounattested in dialogue

  • //bleɪz//

A fire, especially a fast-burning fire producing a lot of flames and light.

noun

  1. 1

    A fire, especially a fast-burning fire producing a lot of flames and light.

    Long after his cigar burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze. When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals,[…].

  2. 2

    Intense, direct light accompanied with heat.

    They sought shelter from the blaze of the sun.

    O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse / Without all hope of day!

  3. 3

    A high-visibility orange colour, typically used in warning signs and hunters' clothing.

  4. 4

    A bursting out, or active display of any quality.

    his blaze of wrath

    For what is glory but the blaze of fame?

  5. 5

    A hand consisting of five face cards.

Etymology

From Middle English blase, from Old English blæse, blase (“firebrand, torch, lamp, flame”), from Proto-West Germanic *blasā, from Proto-Germanic *blasǭ (“torch”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to shine, be white”). Cognate with Low German blas (“burning candle, torch, fire”), Middle High German blas (“candle, torch, flame”).

verb

  1. 1

    To be on fire, especially producing bright flames.

    The campfire blazed merrily.

  2. 2

    To send forth or reflect a bright light; shine like a flame.

    And far and wide the icy summit blaze.

    Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path[…]. It twisted and turned,[…]and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights.

  3. 3

    To be conspicuous; shine brightly a brilliancy (of talents, deeds, etc.).

  4. 4

    rareTo set in a blaze; burn.

  5. 5

    To cause to shine forth; exhibit vividly; be resplendent with.

  6. 6

    figurativeTo be furiously angry; to speak or write in a rage.

    “I’ll die before I let my grandad pay you that much money!” blazed the girl.

  7. 7

    slangTo smoke marijuana.

    I take a hit of that chronic, it got me stuck / But really what’s amazing is how I keep blazing

    Fam, I don’t blaze / But I can bill up, so if I get bored / I might mm, bill it / At studio, I’m like mm, kill it

Etymology

From Middle English blasen, from Middle English blase (“torch”). See above.

noun

  1. 1

    The white or lighter-coloured markings on a horse's face.

    The palomino had a white blaze on its face.

  2. 2

    A spot made on trees by chipping off a piece of the bark, usually as a surveyor's mark.

    The blaze is a longitudinal cut on trees at convenient intervals, made by cutting off the bark with an axe or hatchet: three blazes in a perpendicular line on the same tree indicating a legislative road, the single blaze, a settlement or neighbourhood road.

  3. 3

    A waymark: any marking as painted on trees, carvings, affixed markers, posts, flagging, or crosses placed to lead hikers on their trail.

Etymology

] A 1639 borrowing, perhaps from Dutch bles or Middle Low German blesse, bles, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *blasī, from Proto-Germanic *blasį̄, from *blasaz (“white, pale (of animals)”) + *-į̄ (forming nouns), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“shiny, white”). Cognate with German Blesse, Swedish bläs. The verb is from the noun.

verb

  1. 1

    To mark with a white spot on the face (as a horse).

  2. 2

    To set a mark on (as a tree, usually by cutting off a piece of its bark).

    They had, just as we expected they would, cut Stuart’s tracks, and had actually slept one night in one of his old camping-places, finding the trees “blazed” and marked “S.,” as were all the trees at intervals along his line of exploration.

    We drew them up, therefore, and concealed them among the bushes, blazing a tree with our axes, so that we should find them again.

  3. 3

    To indicate or mark out (a trail, especially through vegetation) by a series of blazes.

    The guide blazed his way through the undergrowth.

  4. 4

    To mark off or stake a claim to land.

    He blazed his claim on the land.

  5. 5

    figurativeTo set a precedent for the taking-on of a challenge; lead by example.

    Darwin blazed a path for the rest of us.

verb

  1. 1

    To blow, as from a trumpet.

  2. 2

    To publish; announce publicly.

  3. 3

    To disclose; bewray; defame.

  4. 4

    To blazon.

    And nowe here is another crosse for your learning, and is thus blazed. The field is Argét, a playn crosse Gules, voyded of the first.

    [...] yée thal blaze his Armes thus. A. beareth Argent, and Sable parted per Pale.

    Beinge thus blazed: Henzell On a ffeild Gules, beareth Three Acornes Slipped Or; Two and One.

Etymology

From Middle English blasen (“to blow”), from Old English *blǣsan, from Proto-West Germanic *blāsan, from Proto-Germanic *blēsaną (“to blow”). Related to English blast.

noun

  1. 1

    Publication; the act of spreading widely by report.

Forms

plural
blazes
past tense
blazed
past participle
blazed
present participle
blazing
third person singular
blazes
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).