Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Gleaming |
GleamingAdjective1. Bright with a steady but subdued shining; "from the plane we saw the city below agleam with lights"; "the gleaming brass on the altar"; "Nereids beneath the nitid moon". Noun1. A flash of light (especially reflected light). 2. An appearance of reflected light. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "gleaming" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1010. (references) |
Synonyms: GleamingSynonyms: agleam (adj), nitid (adj), gleam (n), glimmer (n), glow (n), lambency (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Gleaming |
| English words defined with "gleaming": agleam ♦ glossy ♦ nitid ♦ satin, satiny, silken, silklike, silky, sleek, slick. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "gleaming": Diary ♦ HEAD ♦ -head ♦ Lovely. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "gleaming": Gleam. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Only one thing in the world could've dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window (A Christmas Story; writing credit: Leigh Brown, Bob Clark, and Jean Shepherd.) 'Cause as I was cleaning the gleaming guts of that bird off my car, I thought of a name for the drug: Gleemonex (Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy; writing credit: Kevin McDonald; Mark McKinney) Forty soft, gleaming watts of it (Spider-Man; writing credit: Stan Lee; Steve Ditko) | |
Lyrics | And all the stars are gleaming (Spanish Harlem; performing artist: Aretha Franklin) As for me, icy gleaming pinky diamond ring (No Diggity; performing artist: Blackstreet) Gleaming in the dark sea, (Tonight and the Rest of My Life; performing artist: Nina Gordon) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | The gleaming galley of the NOAA Ship RONALD H. BROWN. Credit: Sailing for Science - the NOAA Fleet Then and Now. |  | Gleaming Treasure Island ... San Francisco Bay, site of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition ... Peggy Marks is in the foreground, on one of the Elephant Towers, looming beyond is the magnificent Tower of the Sun. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Subcontracting aircraft parts. This gleaming surface is part of an airplane stabilizer being finished by a worker in an Ohio plant. Akron, Ohio. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |
| "Gleaming Green" by Jaime Krayger Commentary: "Dale Chihuly show at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, USA." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Author | Quotation |
Mike Edwards | Twilight's Last Gleaming A coasting half-moon pumping luminescence into clouds. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
Winston S. Churchill | 1946 | The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. ("Iron Curtain" Speech) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | The bright sun was gleaming through the new and glossy leaves |
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Joyce, James | Old phrases, sweet only with a disinterred sweetness like the figseeds Cranly rooted out of his gleaming teeth |
Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck, John | She looked ahead at the gleaming road again |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | HEAD-:MONEY:, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax. In ancient times there lived a king Whose tax-collectors could not wring From all his subjects gold enough To make the royal way less rough. For pleasure's highway, like the dames Whose premises adjoin it, claims Perpetual repairing. So The tax-collectors in a row Appeared before the throne to pray Their master to devise some way To swell the revenue. "So great," Said they, "are the demands of state A tithe of all that we collect Will scarcely meet them. Pray reflect: How, if one-tenth we must resign, Can we exist on t'other nine?" The monarch asked them in reply: "Has it occurred to you to try The advantage of economy?" "It has," the spokesman said: "we sold All of our gray garrotes of gold; With plated-ware we now compress The necks of those whom we assess. Plain iron forceps we employ To mitigate the miser's joy Who hoards, with greed that never tires, That which your Majesty requires." Deep lines of thought were seen to plow Their way across the royal brow. "Your state is desperate, no question; Pray favor me with a suggestion." "O King of Men," the spokesman said, "If you'll impose upon each head A tax, the augmented revenue We'll cheerfully divide with you." As flashes of the sun illume The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom, The king smiled grimly. "I decree That it be so -- and, not to be In generosity outdone, Declare you, each and every one, Exempted from the operation Of this new law of capitation. But lest the people censure me Because they're bound and you are free, 'Twere well some clever scheme were laid By you this poll-tax to evade. I'll leave you now while you confer With my most trusted minister." The monarch from the throne-room walked And straightway in among them stalked A silent man, with brow concealed, Bare-armed -- his gleaming axe revealed! G.J. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Gleaming" is generally used as a lexical verb (-ing form) -- approximately 67.00% of the time. "Gleaming" is used about 403 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Lexical Verb (-ing form) | 67% | 270 | 17,892 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 31.51% | 127 | 28,395 |
| Noun (singular) | 0.99% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.5% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 403 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "gleaming": gleaming-booted. | |
Ending with "gleaming": clean-gleaming. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
gleaming cube | 40 |
gleaming the cube dvd | 15 |
gleaming | 8 |
twilight last gleaming | 7 |
gleaming spire | 3 |
cube gleaming soundtrack | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "gleaming"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Arabic | لامع (blazing, bright, brilliant, burnished, dazzling, flamboyant, flashing, glazed, glimmering, glistering, glittering, glossed, glossy, golden, high, lambent, lucid, lustrous, outstanding, polished, radiant, refulgent, resplendent, sheen, shining, shiny, showy, sleek, slick, sparkle, sparkling, star, staring). (various references) | |
Chinese | 闪烁 (Flickered, flickering, Gleamed, Glitter, Glittered, Glittering, spangled, Spangling). (various references) | |
Czech | zářící (fulgent, sparkling, starry), třpytivý, lesklý (bright, glassy, glossal, glossy, polished, resplendent, shining, shiny, tawdry). (various references) | |
French | luisant (glossy). (various references) | |
German | schimmernd (glimmering, lustrous, opalescent, shimmering), glänzend (brilliant, brilliantly, clinking, dazzling, effulgent, effulgently, gleamy, glistening, glittering, glossily, glossing, glossy, ingenious, ingeniously, lustered, lustrous, lustrously, marvelous, radiant, refulgent, resplendent, resplendently, sheeny, shinily, shining, shiny, sparkling, splendid, splendidly, vintage), durchschimmernd. (various references) | |
Greek | αστραφτερός (glistening, radiant, sparkling). (various references) | |
Hebrew | התנוצצות (glittering, sparkling), בריק (lustrous, shining). (various references) | |
Indonesian | gemerlapan (shining), gemerlap (shining), cerlang (bright), cemerlang (bright, brilliant, dazzling, sparkle). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | つなぎ目 (a joint, a link, all-night Mah Jongg, aloof, altogether, at all, beyond doubt, certainly, complaining, entirely, extra-high-speed Touhoku-line shinkansen, feeling awkward, going long way at steady pace, morose, nitpicking, pointed, sauce for dipping tempura, slippery, smooth, sound of walking, surely, tie-together point, to pitchforward, trudgingly). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | てかてか . (various references) | |
Korean | 빛남 (Beaming, Brightening, Glittering, Radiance, Raying, shining). (various references) | |
Manx | skelley (disappearance, gleam), falleaysagh (flashing, flicker, gleam). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | eamingglay.(various references) | |
Romanian | sclipitor (bright, brilliant, brilliantly, flaming, flashy, fulgent, shining), scãpãrãtor (gleamy, scintillating, sparkling). (various references) | |
Scottish | dèarrsadh (effulgence, radiance, shining). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | svetlucav (glimmering, glistening). (various references) | |
Swedish | glimmer (glitter, mica). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | clara, clare, clarissimus, clarius, micans, micantes, micantis, nitidus, praeclarior. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Gleaming" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: gleasing, gleeming, gliming. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "gleaming" (pronounced glē"ming) |
| 4 | -ē" m i ng | beaming, dreaming, redeeming, scheming, screaming, seeming, steaming, streaming, teaming, teeming. |
| 3 | -m i ng | acclaiming, affirming, aiming, alarming, arming, assuming, barnstorming, becoming, blaming, blooming, blossoming, bombing, booming, bottoming, brainstorming, brimming, calming, charming, claiming, climbing, combing, coming, condemning, confirming, conforming, consuming, cramming, damming, damning, daydreaming, deprogramming, diagraming, dimming, disarming, disclaiming, dooming, drumming, dumbing, embalming, exclaiming, farming, filming, firebombing, firming, flaming, foaming, forming, forthcoming, framing, fuming, gaming, gloaming, grooming, harming, heartwarming, helming, hemming, homecoming, homing, humming, incoming, inflaming, informing, jamming, lambing, lemming, liming, looming, maiming, mainstreaming, misinforming, mushrooming, naming, nonperforming, numbing, oncoming, outperforming, overcoming, overwhelming, performing, plumbing, presuming, priming, proclaiming, programing, programming, ramming, reaffirming, rearming, reclaiming, reforming, renaming, reprogramming, resuming, rhyming, roaming, rooming, shaming, shortcoming, skimming, slamming, slimming, squirming, stemming, storming, strumming, succumbing, summing, swarming, swimming, taming, terming, thumbing, timing, transforming, trimming, unassuming, unbecoming, upcoming, vacuuming, warming, welcoming, zooming. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-e-g-g-i-l-m-n" | |
-1 letter: geminal. | |
-2 letters: ageing, enigma, gaeing, gagmen, gamine, gaming, genial, gingal, laming, leggin, legman, linage, lingam, malign, maline, mangel, mangle, menial, miggle, milage, mingle, niggle. | |
-3 letters: aggie, agile, aging, algin, alien, align, aline, amine, angel, angle, anile, anime, elain, email, gamin, gimel, gleam, glean, glime, image, ingle, leman, liane, liang, ligan, liman, limen, linga. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-e-g-g-i-l-m-n" | |
+3 letters: beglamoring, embrangling, malingering. | |
+4 letters: beglamouring, greenmailing, legitimating, telegramming. | |
+5 letters: agglomerating, agglomeration, deglamorizing, hemagglutinin. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Quotations: Familiar | 9. Quotations: Historic 10. Quotations: Fiction 11. Quotations: Non-fiction 12. Usage Frequency | 13. Expressions 14. Expressions: Internet 15. Translations: Modern 16. Translations: Ancient | 17. Derivations 18. Rhymes 19. Anagrams 20. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
