glamour
Meanings
- Originally, enchantment; magic charm; especially, the effect of a spell that causes one to see objects in a form that differs from reality, typically to make filthy, ugly, or repulsive things seem beauteous.
- Alluring beauty or charm (often with sex appeal).
- Any excitement, appeal, or attractiveness associated with a person, place, or thing; that which makes something appealing.
- Any artificial interest in, or association with, objects, or persons, through which they appear delusively magnified or glorified.
- A kind of haze in the air, causing things to appear different from what they really are.
- An item, motif, person, image that by association improves appearance.
- A beautiful woman.
- To enchant; to bewitch.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Borrowed from Scots glamour (“magic”), alteration of Middle English gramere (“grammar”), from Old French gramaire. Doublet of glamoury, gramarye, grammar, and grimoire. A connection has also been suggested with Old Norse glámr (“the moon", also "the name of a ghost”, poetic byname, literally “the pale one”) and glámsýni (“glamour, illusion”, literally “glam-sight”). From Grettir's Saga aka Grettis Saga, one of the Sagas of Icelanders, after the hero has been cursed by Glam, aka Glamr: "...he was become so fearsome a man in the dark, that he durst go nowhither alone after nightfall, for then he seemed to see all kinds of horrors. And that has fallen since into a proverb, that "Glam lends eyes", or gives Glamsight to those who see things nowise as they are."