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gloss

Pronunciation: /ɡlɒs/

The English word “gloss” has 13 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A surface shine or luster.
  2. A superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
  3. 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.
  4. Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
  5. An expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
  6. An extensive commentary on some text.
  7. An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
  8. A definition or explanation of a word sense.

verb

  1. To give a gloss or sheen to.
  2. To make (something) attractive by deception
  3. To become shiny.
  4. Used in a phrasal verb: gloss over (“to cover up a mistake or crime, to treat something with less care than it deserves”).
  5. To add a gloss to (a text).

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.