gloss
Meanings
noun
- A surface shine or luster.
- A superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
verb
- To give a gloss or sheen to.
- To make (something) attractive by deception
- To become shiny.
- Used in a phrasal verb: gloss over (“to cover up a mistake or crime, to treat something with less care than it deserves”).
noun
- 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.
- Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
- An expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
- An extensive commentary on some text.
- An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
- A definition or explanation of a word sense.
verb
- To add a gloss to (a text).
Pronunciation
Word forms
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.
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.