Dictionary entry

Glance (2)

Webster's Dictionary 1913

Glance, v. i. [imp. & p. p.Glanced (?); p. pr. & vb. n.Glancing (?).] 1. To shoot or emit a flash of light; to shine; to flash.

From art, from nature, from the schools,

Let random influences glance,

Like light in many a shivered lance,

That breaks about the dappled pools. Tennyson.

2. To strike and fly off in an oblique direction; to dart aside. ”Your arrow hath glanced”. Shak.

On me the curse aslope

Glanced on the ground. Milton.

3. To look with a sudden, rapid cast of the eye; to snatch a momentary or hasty view.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. Shak.

4. To make an incidental or passing reflection; to allude; to hint; — often with at.

Wherein obscurely

Cæsar's ambition shall be glanced at. Shak.

He glanced at a certain reverend doctor. Swift.

5. To move quickly, appearing and disappearing rapidly; to be visible only for an instant at a time; to move interruptedly; to twinkle.

And all along the forum and up the sacred seat,

His vulture eye pursued the trip of those small glancing feet. Macaulay.