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gloss

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: gloss- and gloss.

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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    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.

    Noun

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    gloss (usually uncountable, plural glosses)

    1. A surface shine or luster.
      Synonyms: brilliance, gleam, luster, sheen, shine
    2. (figuratively) A superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
      Synonyms: façade, front, veneer.
      • 1770, [Oliver] Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, a Poem, London: […] W[illiam] Griffin, […], →OCLC:
        To me more dear, congenial to my heart, / One native charm than all the gloss of art.
      • 2013 September 7, Daniel Taylor, “Danny Welbeck leads England's rout of Moldova but hit by Ukraine ban”, in The Guardian‎[1]:
        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.
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    Verb

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    gloss (third-person singular simple present glosses, present participle glossing, simple past and past participle glossed)

    1. (transitive) To give a gloss or sheen to.
      Synonyms: polish, shine
    2. (transitive) To make (something) attractive by deception
      • 1722, Ambrose Philips, The Briton:
        You have the art to gloss the foulest cause.
    3. (intransitive) To become shiny.
    4. (transitive, idiomatic) Used in a phrasal verb: gloss over (“to cover up a mistake or crime, to treat something with less care than it deserves”).
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    Etymology 2

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      Glosas Emilianenses, 11th c.

      From Middle English glosse, alteration of glose, from Old French glose, from Late Latin glōssa (“obsolete or foreign word requiring explanation”), from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, “language”). Doublet of glossa and gloze.

      Noun

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      gloss (plural glosses)

      1. (countable) 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.
        Synonyms: gloze, annotation
        Hypernyms: explanation, note, marginalia
        • 1684, Samuel Butler, Hudibras:
          All this, without a gloss or comment, / He would unriddle in a moment.
        • 2021, Mary Wellesley, The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts, page 9:
          He was a prolific annotator - writing around fifty thousand glosses in as many as twenty manuscripts.
      2. (countable) Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
      3. (countable, obsolete) An expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
      4. (countable) An extensive commentary on some text.
        Synonyms: commentary, discourse, discussion
      5. (countable, law, US) An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
        • 1979, American Bar Foundation., Annotated code of professional responsibility, page ix:
          This volume is thus not a narrowly defined treatment of the Code of Professional Responsibility but rather represents a "common law" gloss on it.
        • 2007, Bruce R. Hopkins., The law of tax-exempt organizations., page 76:
          Judicial Gloss on Test [section title]
      6. (lexicography) A definition or explanation of a word sense.
        • 2007, Martin Rajman, Speech and Language Engineering, pages 244 text=For instance the concept {cat, true cat} has the following gloss: / "feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and being unable to roar".:
        • 2011, Gabriele Stein, “The linking of lemma to gloss in Elyot's Dictionary (1538)”, in Olga Timoleeva, Tanja Saily, editor, Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie:
          Dictionary entries comprise two essential parts, the headword ('lemma') and the author's explanation ('gloss').
        • 2019, Jonathan Kline, A Proverb a Day in Biblical Hebrew, page xi:
          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 […] .
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      extensive commentary on some text

      Etymology 3

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        An alteration of Middle English glosen after Etymology 2, from Old French gloser; compare Medieval Latin glossāre.

        Verb

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        gloss (third-person singular simple present glosses, present participle glossing, simple past and past participle glossed)

        1. (transitive) To add a gloss to (a text).
          Synonyms: annotate, mark up
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        Further reading

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        Anagrams

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        Portuguese

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        Etymology

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          Unadapted borrowing from English (lip) gloss.

          Pronunciation

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          Noun

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          gloss m (uncountable)

          1. lip gloss (cosmetic product)

          Further reading

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