gloss
nounverbnounverbattested in dialogue
- United Kingdom//ɡlɒs//
- United States//ɡlɔs//
- //ɡlɑs//
A surface shine or luster.
noun
- 1
A surface shine or luster.
- 2
figurativeA superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
.
To me more dear, congenial to my heart, / One native charm than all the gloss of art.
Hodgson may now have to bring in James Milner on the left and, on that basis, a certain amount of gloss was taken off a night on which Welbeck scored twice but barely celebrated either before leaving the pitch angrily complaining to the Slovakian referee.
Etymology
Probably from a North Germanic language, compare Icelandic glossi (“spark, flame”), glossa (“to flame”); or perhaps from dialectal Dutch gloos (“a glow, flare”), related to West Frisian gloeze (“a glow”), Middle Low German glȫsen (“to smoulder, glow”), German glosen (“to smoulder”); ultimately from Proto-Germanic *glus- (“to glow, shine”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰel- (“to flourish; be green or yellow”). More at glow.
verb
- 1
To give a gloss or sheen to.
- 2
To make (something) attractive by deception
You have the art to gloss the foulest cause.
- 3
To become shiny.
- 4
Used in a phrasal verb: gloss over (“to cover up a mistake or crime, to treat something with less care than it deserves”).
noun
- 1
A brief explanatory note or translation of a foreign, archaic, technical, difficult, complex, or uncommon expression, inserted after the original, in the margin of a document, or between lines of a text.
All this, without a gloss or comment, / He would unriddle in a moment.
He was a prolific annotator - writing around fifty thousand glosses in as many as twenty manuscripts.
- 2
Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
- 3
obsoleteAn expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
- 4
An extensive commentary on some text.
- 5
An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
This volume is thus not a narrowly defined treatment of the Code of Professional Responsibility but rather represents a "common law" gloss on it.
Judicial Gloss on Test [section title]
- 6
A definition or explanation of a word sense.
[object Object]
Dictionary entries comprise two essential parts, the headword ('lemma') and the author's explanation ('gloss').
Therefore, for many of the Hebrew words in this book, I have provided more than one gloss (using a slash to separate alternatives, or double slashes when a single slash would be ambiguous), in order to give you a sense of the possible meanings of nuances […].
Etymology
From Middle English glosse, glose, from Late Latin glōssa (“obsolete or foreign word requiring explanation”), from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, “language”). Doublet of glossa.
verb
- 1
To add a gloss to (a text).
Etymology
From Middle English glossen, glosen, from Old French gloser and Medieval Latin glossāre.
Forms
- plural
- glosses
- past tense
- glossed
- past participle
- glossed
- present participle
- glossing
- third person singular
- glosses