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verb
Gloss  v. i.  
1.
To make comments; to comment; to explain.
2.
To make sly remarks, or insinuations.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gloss" Quotes from Famous Books



... splinter or chip; and in his Supplement, s. v. Spang-new, after pointing out the connexion between spinga (assula) and spaungha (lamina), shows that, if this be the original, the allusion must be to metal newly wrought, that has, as it were, the gloss from the fire on it: in short, that the epithet is the same as one equally familiar to us, i. e. fire-new, Germ. vier-neu. We will bring this note to a close by a reference to Sewell's Dutch Dictionary, where Spikspelder nieuw is rendered ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... is much humour, and extreme good sense under the covering of this blundering expression. It is a sly insinuation that length of years, and the being much hacknied in the ways of men, as Shakespeare expresses it, take off the gloss of virtue, and bring much defilement on the manners. Warburton.] Much of this is true, but I believe Shakespeare did not intend to bestow all this reflection on ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... for cutting and stamping. The nozzle of the plodder is heated by means of a Bunsen burner to about 120 deg. or 130 deg. F. (49 deg.-55 deg. C.) to allow the soap to be easily forced out, and this also imparts a good gloss and finish to the ejected bar—if the nozzle is too hot, however, the soap will be blistered, whereas insufficient heat will result in streaky soap of a ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... walking with unaccustomed indecision, his fur coat open, his opera-hat pushed up on his crisp hair. Dark under the eyes, he had not the proper gloss of a Dromore at this season of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... fairy land of philosophy. And it very frequently happens, that those pleasing impressions on the imagination subsist and produce their effect, even after the understanding has been satisfied of their unsubstantial nature. There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth. I have met with a quotation in Lord Coke's Reports that pleased me very much, though I do not know from whence he has taken it: "Interdum fucata falsitas ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... keep the raffia damp and use strands of equal size. Dampness adds gloss and smoothness to the ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... laid out for me. Then I made bold to exchange roles. With some maidenly hesitation, which soon vanished, she in turn laid before me the inner history of her life. Ah, my boy, how little there was in it to gloss over! how much to humiliate the best and noblest of us men! It was a revelation that made me prostrate myself before her. I was not ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... in blossom all over, Bent lowly down to my hand, And yielded its bloom, that hung high from each lover, To me, the least of the band. I went to the river, one net-cast I threw in, Where the stream's transparence ran, Forget shall I never, how the beauty[108] I drew in, Shone bright as the gloss of the swan. Oh, happy the day that crown'd my affection With such a prize to my share! My love is a ray, a morning reflection, Beside me she ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... enemies than might have been expected. His manner had always been radiantly self-confident; but there was about him a conspicuous element of quick feeling, of warm humanity, which grew rather than diminished with his success. He was frank, too, and did not try to gloss over a mistake or a failure. Perhaps in his lordly way he felt he could afford himself a few now and then, he was so much cleverer ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to cheer and applaud the incoming regiments,—regiments of gallant young men, their own sons and the sons of neighbors: and it was like the opening chapter of a story. Ah! the story had run through many chapters since then, and what different ones! The smart uniforms had lost all their gloss, blood was upon the flags, the glory had changed to ashes; every family wore mourning for somebody. The pleasant Charleston home, where Mrs. Pickens had stood on the balcony to watch the gray-coated ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... carefully; it has not been a lightly-considered matter with me at all, and, after thinking it well over, I have come to the conclusion that it is not sufficient to part us. You see, sweet, that you may implicitly believe me. I have no false gloss of compliments. Frankly, as you yourself would do, I admit the drawback; but, unlike you, I affirm that it ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... with the gloss of prosperity. When they left the train they put on polished silk-hats, brought forth by ready servants, and when they walked through the streets of the little villages they were resplendent in long, black frock-coats and light trousers. They were not, as Mr. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... make an effort to feel at ease, but all their hilarity is fictitious and assumed—they have the common feelings of our nature, and of which they can never divest themselves. Those who possess an unusual buoyancy of spirits, and gloss over their feelings with their companions, I have ever observed on the whole, to feel the most internal agony. I have seen upwards of two thousand under this sentence, and never conversed with one who did not appear to consider the punishment, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various

... take the trio in and give them house-room. But he bore the storming of his hard-won privacy with a bad grace, and Mary had much to gloss ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... are also used as cures. Iguana fat for pains in the head and stiffness anywhere. Porcupine and opossum fats for preserving their hair, fish fat to gloss their skins, emu fat in cold weather to save their ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... spoke French well and seems clever as well as most gracious and friendly. He assured me that the Turkish Forts at the Dardanelles were absolutely impregnable. The words "absolute" and "impregnable" don't impress me overmuch. They are only human opinions used to gloss over flaws in the human knowledge or will. Nothing is impregnable either—that's a sure thing. No reasons were given ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... Prachetas, Kasyapa and Gargya, are on Parasara's list, and the remaining fourteen, not before mentioned: Madhusudana Saraswati names the same nineteen of Yajnavalkya's list, also Devala, Narada, Paithinasi: Rama Krishna, in his gloss to the Grihya Sutras of Paraskara, mentions thirty-nine, of whom nine (distinguished by three crosses) are new ones. There is also a Dharma Sastra attributed to Sankha and Likhita jointly, thus making forty-seven in the whole. The professor considers all to be extant; and ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... pardon,) so far from that being the whole of the meaning of the Canon, his gloss happens exactly to miss the only important point. The plain meaning of the words,—"Only out of the Scriptures can you explain the Scriptures,"—is obviously rather this:—'That in order to interpret the Bible, our aim must be to ascertain how the Bible interprets ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... George had apparently altered for the better. His improved finances had sweetened his temper and cast the shining gloss of prosperity over his appearance; and, in a measure at least, time had revived in him the ardent, if fluctuating, emotions of the lover. For three months after her return, he evinced a fervent sentiment for Gabriella, which she, who was staunchly paying ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... his Italian. He was well versed in the literature of the language, particularly in its dramatic literature, and had long meditated penning a gloss to "The Murther of Gonzago," a play which Hamlet held ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... The traveling men from the Burke House just across the street used to drop in at the Bijou for an evening's entertainment. They usually sat well toward the front, and Terry's expert playing, and the gloss of her black hair, and her piquant profile as she sometimes looked up toward the stage for a signal from one of the performers caught their fancy, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... by him, her restraining hand still on his arm, the sun glinting in the gloss of her dark hair, her dark eyes fixed on him in denial, in a softness of pity that Morgan knew was not for his victims alone. And so in that revel of base surrender to his primal passions she had come to him, she whom his heart sought among the faces ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... them," said Abraham White, in the ratification convention of Massachusetts, in 1788, "though every one of them should be a Moses." "These lawyers," cried Amos Singletary, "and men of learning and moneyed men that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly to make us poor illiterate people swallow the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves! They mean to get all the money into their hands, and then they will swallow up all us little folk, like the Leviathan, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... and hang the rude walls of its abode with silk. On the other hand, the Anthophorae and the Halicti, two species of Wild Bees whose grubs weave no cocoon, delicately glaze the inside of their earthen cells and give them the gloss of polished ivory. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... seldom washed at all. She held that washing was very unhealthy and took the natural gloss off the face, and that, moreover, soap either tightened the skin or made it wrinkle. Her own face was very tight in some places and very loose in others, and Mary Makebelieve often thought that the tight places were spots which her mother used ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... Porteous had began to doubt the propriety of his own conduct, and the reception he met with from the magistrates was such as to make him still more anxious to gloss it over. He denied that he had given orders to fire; he denied he had fired with his own hand; he even produced the fusee which he carried as an officer for examination; it was found still loaded. Of three cartridges ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... it must be remembered that beside the common meaning there was a gloss upon the word derived from Elizabethan stage practice. In the prologue to The Fair Maid of the Inn (licensed 1626), good plays are spoken of as often scurvily ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... pray,' or, as a certain Dr. M—— always worded it, 'Ye must pray,[1199] did not necessarily imply much heart in fulfilling the injunction by which the people were called upon to pray for their new lords. But, curiously enough, when George I. came to the throne, the political gloss attached to 'the Bidding' became reversed. In the royal directions to the archbishops, the canonical form, with the royal titles included, was strictly enjoined;[1200] and consequently not those who used, but those who neglected it, ran a risk of being set down as having Jacobite proclivities. It ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... of Japanese forms is based upon a semantic framework within which the formal characteristics of the language are organized. For example, given the construction aguru coto ar (p. 31) and its gloss 'Erit hoc quod ist offere: idest offeret (It will be that he is to offer, or he will offer),' it is clear that the aguru coto is classified as an infinitive because of its semantic equivalence to offere. ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado

... that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time; at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. We began the composition together, on that to me memorable evening: I furnished two ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... Hobson's. The job-master was desolated, but he had sold three animals the day before to an English milord, a very big gentleman, and his party. He had just one horse, but it was a beauty. The horse was trotted out. It was well groomed—they always are, and arsenic does impart a nice gloss to the hide—and looked imposing, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... condition for wear; but in order to give superfine cloth beauty, it is sheared several times, then exposed to the action of steam, and at the same time brushed with cylinder brushes. Other operations, of minor importance, are carried on for the purpose of giving smoothness and gloss. It may be observed that a brilliant appearance does not always, in modern manufactures, betoken the best cloth. An eminent woollen manufacturer having been asked what cloth he would recommend for wear and warmth to a backwoodsman, answered quickly, "Nothing can ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... Rhodes—was a plump and vivacious little brunette of forty, with a gloss on her black hair and a sparkle in her black eyes. She still retained a good deal of the superabundant vitality of youth; in her own house, when the curtains were down and the company not too miscellaneous, she was sometimes equal to a break-down or a cake-walk. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... at the Court of St. Cloud, want of morals is not atoned for by good breeding or good manners. The hideousness of vice, the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank, the pride of favour, and the shame of venality do not wear here that delicate veil, that gloss of virtue, which, in other Courts, lessens the deformity of corruption and the scandal of depravity. Duplicity and hypocrisy are here very common indeed, more so than dissimulation anywhere else; but barefaced knaves and impostors must always ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Sk. It was usual with Chatterton to prefix a to words of all sorts, without any regard to custom or propriety. See in the Alphabetical Gloss. Aboune, Abreave, Acome, Aderne, ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... schoolboys but as a grown-up man; he was a proficient in the art of bowing, could brighten up old brass and silver as good as new, was always ready to buy old black coats, and possessed the skill of giving them a degree of gloss which insured their ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... deafening salvos a dazzling vision appeared upon the platform, came forward with the carriage of a conscious queen, stood bowing and beaming in the gloss and glitter of fabric and of gem that were yet less radiant than herself. Stingaree stood inanimate between stamping feet and clapping hands. No; he would never have connected this magnificent woman with ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... master of the art of measuring the depth of a hidden purse. He recalled the brilliant Casimir Wieniawski of eight years past—the curled darling of the hot-hearted ladies of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and Singapore. In a glance of cursory inspection Alan Hawke had noted the doubtful gloss of the dress suit; it was the polish of long wear, not the velvety glow of newness. There was a growing bald spot, scarcely hidden by the Hyperion Polish curls; there were crows'-feet around the bold, insolent ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... irreproachable as their furniture. But among the habitual dwellers in these delicate halls there was a tacit understanding, a prevalent doctrine that required no formal exposition, no proofs and illustrations, no comment and no gloss; which was indeed rather a traditional conviction than an imparted dogma; that the exoteric public were, on many subjects, the victims of very vulgar prejudices, which these enlightened personages wished neither ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... anything or everything for the richest ruby, and that though one couldn't one's self be decently dead to that richness one didn't at all know what "anything" might be or in the least what "everything" was. The gushing cousins, at the same time, assuredly knew still less of that, and Honorine's brave gloss of a whole range alike of possibilities and actualities was in ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... he could not resist the temptation to be generous to his own flesh and blood at the expense of another. The contest within him made him miserable; but the devil and mammon were too strong for him, particularly coming as they did, half hidden beneath the gloss of parental affection. There was little of the Roman about the earl, and he could not condemn his own son; so he fumed and fretted, and twisted himself about in the easy chair in his dingy book-room, and passed long hours in trying to persuade himself that it was for Fanny's advantage ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... slowly spreading leaves She glanced up ever and anon, If yet the shadow of the eaves Had paled the dark gloss they put on. But while her smile like sunlight shone, The life danced to such blossom blown That all the roses ever known, Blanche of Provence, Noisette, or Yonne, Wore no such tint as this pale streak That damasked half the rounding cheek ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... peacocks, but he saw enough to satisfy and interest him, and carried away a pretty little picture of a bright-faced girl standing in the sunshine, which brought out the soft hue of her dress, the fresh color of her cheeks, the golden gloss of her hair, and made her a prominent figure in ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... the Doctor (I perceive) sticketh upon the term of necessity, and will have everything which is not necessary to be indifferent; therefore, to remove this scruple, beside that Chrysostom and the author of the interlineary gloss upon Matt. xviii. 7, take the meaning of those words, "It must needs be that offences come," to be this, it is profitable that offences come. Which gloss, though it be not to be received, yet as Camero noteth,(1211) it is ordinary to call that necessary which is very profitable ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... shade that it seemed to throw out a halo round her head. Upon a smooth and wide brow an abundance of pale fair hair, fine as silk, undulating like the sea, heavy like a helmet, descended low without a trace of gloss, without a gleam in its coils, as though it had never been touched by a ray of light; and a throat white, smooth, palpitating with life, a round neck modelled with strength and delicacy, supported gloriously that radiant face and that pale mass of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... buttonless, and very badly worn and damaged at the sleeves and elbows. I remember, too, with even more distinctness, the hat he wore; it was a high, silk, bell-crowned hat— a man's hat and a veritable "plug"—not a new and shiny "plug," by any means, but still of dignity and gloss enough to furnish a noticeable contrast to the other appurtenances of its wearer's wardrobe. In fact, it was through this latter article of dress that the general attention of the crowd came at last to ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... at the lull Just about daybreak, as he looks across A sparkling foreign country, wonderful To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss Next minute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... little church, quite in harmony with a district of myth and sublimity. It is possible that some who come to Tintagel for the first time may be disappointed. If so, they have expected too much, or have expected the wrong thing. There is no gloss of false romance about the place; the ruins have not the hollow pretentious grandeur of some Norman castles; what we see is the unadorned, unveiled reality of a majestic coast, the low, stark walls of ruin on an immemorial site, the naked wind-beaten church on the heights, the sea breaking ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... penetrate their meaning. I became clearly convinced how indisputably it was the code of sanctity, and hence of truth itself; how really unphilosophical it was to take offence at a few little imperfections of style, not less absurd than the vanity of one who despises everything that wears not the gloss of elegant forms; what still greater absurdity to imagine that such a collection of books, so long held in religious veneration, should not possess an authentic origin, boasting, as they do, such a vast superiority over the Koran, and the ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... "generally said of a goshawk when, having 'put in' a covey of partridges, she takes stand, marking the spot where they disappeared from view until the falconer arrives to put them out to her" (Harting, Bibl. Accip. Gloss. 226). ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... become a monk, I shall be sure to go to Petersburg and get on to some solid magazine as a reviewer, that I shall write for the next ten years, and in the end become the owner of the magazine, and bring it out on the liberal and atheistic side, with a socialistic tinge, with a tiny gloss of socialism, but keeping a sharp look out all the time, that is, keeping in with both sides and hoodwinking the fools. According to your brother's account, the tinge of socialism won't hinder me from laying by the proceeds and investing them under the guidance of some Jew, till at the end of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... leaning over the small table and looking steadfastly at her. She noticed that the wine and food had made his skin greasy. It suddenly occurred to her that Mark Bower resembled certain exotic plants which must be viewed from a distance if they would gratify the critical senses. The gloss of a careful toilet was gone. He was altogether cruder, coarser, more animal, since he had eaten, though his consumption of wine was quite moderate. His big, rather fierce eyes were more than prominent now; they ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... had landed was illuminated by lights which simulated sunshine, and their soft bright glow revealed the violet hue of her eyes and the shimmering gloss of her silken hair. She wore a sleeveless, light blue tunic which was gathered around her ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... stated his opinions too crudely; such frankness will not do here; he is no longer among the ignorant. Eusebius himself rises to speak and, with the insinuating and charming manner for which he is famous, tries to gloss over what Arius ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... applying those words is of a slower progress. The generality of readers, for having found a like robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the same body and inside too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed; the gloss, and outward ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Most of those I converse with, speak the same language I here write; but whether they think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... celebrated volume of sermons, pointed out a passage almost word for word identical with what the pastor had said in his sermon on the previous Sunday—a curious instance of parallel inspiration. Unkind people afterwards spread the gloss that the elder had accused the minister of plagiarism. Mere fiction, no doubt. After a thing has happened people can generally find twenty causes. The excommunication, however, was real enough, and ten times more effectual ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... the two of them—two banded lovingly against one—making merry together over Purdy's nonsense. She had heard her husband laugh away much unkinder remarks than this. And perhaps if she had stopped there, and said no more, it might have been all right. By her stupid attempt to gloss things over, she had really managed to hurt him, and had made him think ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... to permit a lady to languish in vain. The marquis, whose mind was occupied with other passions, was insensible to the misconduct of his wife, who at all times had the address to disguise her vices beneath the gloss of virtue and innocent freedom. The intrigue was discovered by madame, who, having one day left a book in the oak parlour, returned thither in search of it. As she opened the door of the apartment, she heard the voice of the cavalier in passionate exclamation; and on entering, discovered ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... but I must leave the reader to determine the exact meaning of this term of reproach. As pingle signifies a small croft, Nares (citing a passage from Lyly's "Euphues") says that pingler is "probably a labouring horse, kept by a farmer in his homestead." "Gloss." in v.—In Brockett's "Gloss, of North Country Words" is "Pingle, to work assiduously but inefficiently,—to labour until you are almost blind." In Forby's "Vocab. of East Anglia" we find, "Pingle, to pick one's food, to eat squeamishly:" ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... obscure remark, but had not made much progress, when at the other end of the room she caught a glimpse of Aubrey. Though he stood with his back to her, she felt sure it was Aubrey. She knew him by the poise of his head and the soft golden gloss on his hair; and a moment later, his voice reached her ear. He came up towards them, stopping every minute to speak with some acquaintance, so that it took him a little time to ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... the school-like gloss That most consists of echoing words and terms ... Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance— Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts— But a direct and analytic sum Of all the worth and first effects of art. And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life That it ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... she cried, throwing up one arm, and thereby pushing back her gray bonnet, and exhibiting some of the gloss of her light brown hair. "Can't ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... and the Stufs, laces, lining, cuffs, and many other things are yet to be bought. Well, who can see an end of all your business! There's one piece of stuf is too light, and another too dark; the third looks dull and hath no gloss. And see here's three or four daies gon, and little or nothing ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... teachers, who were subjects of admiration in every respect; met candidates for baptism and examined them; married a couple; and Bro. Griffiths preached. There is a new chapel, of very neat native workmanship; with a pulpit carved out of a solid piece of wood, oiled to give it colour and gloss. In the chapel the whole population of the island was assembled, dressed in new dresses, attentive, and interested. So were we, you may believe, when we remembered that only two years ago all these people were heathens. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... by human means. But the dean saw a ray of hope out of those purblind old eyes of his. Yes, let them tell the bishop how distasteful to them was this Mr Slope: new bishop just come to his seat could not wish to insult his clergy while the gloss was yet fresh ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... said the old man, gently. "He won't wear anything when once the gloss is off it. But," with a sad smile, "I get ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... Milton—and advanced, with an air of polite reserve, to meet the entering visitor. This was a man more than ten years his junior, short of stature, with clear-cut features and thoughtful blue eyes contrasting with hair and moustache dark almost to blackness. His neatly brushed garments had a threadbare gloss, and his broad linen falling collar, though white and clean, was somewhat frayed. But his bearing was high-bred and distinguished, with an air of sober yet resolute earnestness. He wore no sword, and the hat which he carried in his hand was plain ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... also becomes fit for sacrifice. For no land is impure of itself. A land becomes so only by contact." This passage is quoted by a Hindu writer with the same reference to the Code of Manu as the preceding one, but it is not found there and appears to be a gloss by a later writer, explaining how the country south of the Vindhyas, which is excluded by Manu, should be rendered fit for Aryan settlement. [8] Similarly in a reference in the Brahmanas to the migration of the Aryans eastward from the Punjab it is stated ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... tired of Glory: But thanks to the weakness, that thus could pervert her, Since the dearest of prizes to me's a deserter: 200 Mem—whenever a sudden conversion I want, To send to the school of Philosopher Kant; And whenever I need a critic who can gloss over All faults—to send for Mackintosh to write ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... widow Broadnax's chair. It had been left there by a careless servant, who had used a portion of the mixture of red paint and sour buttermilk with which it was filled, to give the wide hearth its fine daily gloss. Miss Penelope had not observed it because she was always oblivious to everything else while hanging over the coffee-pot. The widow Broadnax had seen the cup at once because it was slightly in the way of her foot; and she was quick enough to notice the least discomfort. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... as absurd, and scientifically and scripturally false. There is not so much as a hint at papal authority found in the three old creeds known as the Apostles', the Nicene and the Athanasian, nor in any ancient gloss upon them. Neither can we find in them any of the distinguishing special doctrines ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have been? Is ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... bombast of political and other public humbugs. For this they are not only seldom thanked, but frequently are kicked. Of course this sort of thing is wrong. A Reporter should be independent enough to meet the approaches of gentlemen of the Nincompoop persuasion with a flat rebuff. He should never gloss over a political humbug, whether he belongs to "our side" or not. He is not thanked for doing it, and, furthermore, he loses the respect and confidence of his readers. There are many amiable gentlemen ornamenting the various walks ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... fellow-solitary, and rather busied himself in sundry little coquetries appertaining to his own person. He passed his hand through his hair, re-arranged the cock of his hat, looked complacently at his boots, which still retained the gloss of the morning's varnish, drew down his wristbands, and, in a word, gave sign of a man who desires to make an effect, and feels that he ought to do it. So occupied was he in this self-commune that when he stopped at length at one of the small doors in the small street ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... passion! It will not always banish from your mind, that you have acted ignobly—and condescended to subterfuge to gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.—Do truth and principle require ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... little put out, while the curate, greatly delighted, turned upon d'Artagnan a look full of gratitude. "Well, let us see what is to be derived from this gloss. Moses, the servant of God-he was but a servant, please to understand-Moses blessed with the hands; he held out both his arms while the Hebrews beat their enemies, and then he blessed them with his two hands. Besides, what ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... text with a gloss in Nahuatl of twenty sacred chants of the ancient Mexicans. They are preserved in the Madrid MSS. of Father Sahagun, and date anterior to the Conquest. A paraphrase, notes and a vocabulary are added, and a number of curious illustrations are reproduced ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton

... said Cavalcanti, yielding to his low-born nature, which would escape sometimes through the aristocratic gloss with which he sought to conceal it. Correcting himself immediately, he said, "Excuse me, sir; hope alone makes me almost mad,—what will ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Illiterate, you gloss the Sacred Law, And still your tongue uninjured find? The midday sun with steadfast eye you saw, And are not straightway stricken blind? You thrust your hand into the blazing fire, And draw it forth, unscathed and sound? Drag Charudatta's virtue ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... by what was then a speciality; though it has since become a common enough characteristic of such assemblies. 'Lions' were to be met with there—literary, artistic, and otherwise. The last new poets, painters, players, were to be seen with their honours in their newest gloss; the latest discoverers, navigators, and travellers—freshly escaped from shipwreck or cannibals—the rising stars of the House of Commons—anybody and everybody of the least note, with the provision, possibly, that they should be 'elegant and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... exceptionally well dressed for a schoolboy, and on Sundays he came out with remarkable splendor. In spring and summer he wore a jacket and trousers of the most fashionable cut and of the very finest blue cloth, with a gloss upon it, and a white waistcoat adorned with a bunch of valuable trinkets ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... me as a compilation, but of the highest class; for when possible the facts have been verified on the spot, making it almost an original work. The Glacial chapters seem to me best, and in parts magnificent. I could hardly judge about Man, as all the gloss of novelty was completely worn off. But certainly the aggregation of the evidence produced a very striking effect on my mind. The chapter comparing language and changes of species seems most ingenious and interesting. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... eye, an imagination, and a purpose quite peculiar to himself. He treats "the Grave" with as much originality as if he had been contemporary with the earliest sepulchre—as if he had plucked grass from Abel's tomb; and yet, while it has not lost to his eye its first fearful gloss and glory, it has gathered around it the dear or dismal associations of six thousand years; and Adam and the "new-made widow" seem to be leaning side by side over its dust. We could have conceived ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... the power of acting as a touchstone to all who approached, forcing them to rise or fall to their true level, unconscious of the test applied. Her presence was comfortable, her voice had motherly tones in it, her eyes a helpful look. Even the soft hue of her dress, the brown gloss of her hair, the graceful industry of her hands, had their attractive influence. Sylvia saw and felt these things with the quickness of her susceptible temperament, and found herself so warmed and won, that soon it cost her an effort to withhold anything that ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... When this has dried, it should be sanded lightly and then one or two coats of wax should be properly applied and polished. Directions for waxing are upon the cans in which the wax is bought. A beautiful dull gloss so much sought by finishers of modern furniture will be the result of carefully ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... Brethren. First met with in 1457 they continue to the present day as Moravians. They were subject to constant persecution. In 1505 the Catholic official James Lilienstayn drew up an interesting list of their errors. It seems that their cardinal tenet was the supremacy of Scripture, without gloss, tradition, or interpretation by the Fathers of the church. They rejected the primacy of the pope, and all ceremonies for which authority could not be found in the Bible, and they denied the efficacy of masses for the dead and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... of the Christians, in the Asturias, about 795, the epithet of the Chaste, was not universal in his family. By an intrigue with Sancho Diaz, Count of Saldana, or Saldenha, Donna Ximena, sister of this virtuous prince, bore a son. Some historians attempt to gloss over this incident, by alleging that a private marriage had taken place between the lovers: but King Alphonso, who was well-nigh sainted for living only in platonic union with his wife Bertha, took the scandal greatly to heart. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... difficulty to award the palm for intrinsic beauty to the one rather than to the other of these structures. So, again, it may be remarked that, considered simply in their physical juxtaposition with the human form, the high gloss of a gentleman's hat or of a patent-leather shoe has no more of intrinsic beauty than a similarly high gloss on a threadbare sleeve; and yet there is no question but that all well-bred people (in ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... neighbor: they too maintained armies, palaces, and swarms of household officials, which, though a crushing burden upon the people, were yet so insignificant in comparison with the real pomp of France, that they were in many instances the laughingstock of Europe. Beneath an external gloss of refinement, these princes were, as a class, coarse and selfish, and devoid of any compensating virtues. Neither the common people, whom they had impoverished, nor the Church, which they had robbed, was now strong enough to resist the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... touching and delightful awkwardness of seventeen by the trained dexterity and strength with which she handled her body, as muscular, for all its rounded slimness, as a boy's. Her hair was beautiful, a bright chestnut brown with a good deal of red, its brilliant gloss broken into innumerable high-lights by the ripple of its waviness; and she had one other positive beauty, the clearly penciled line of her long, dark eyebrows, which ran up a trifle at the outer ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... more than a faint blue of shadow beneath her eyes. She honored us at breakfast, and made no manner of reference to what had gone on the evening before. This, then, I saw, was to be our modus vivendi; convention, the social customs we all had known, the art, the gloss, the veneer of life, as life runs on in society as we have organized it! Ah, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... figure came, not insignificant (I mean), but looking very light and slender in the moving shadows, gently here and softly there, as if vague of purpose, with a gloss of tender movement, in and out the wealth of trees, and liberty of the meadow. Who was I to crouch, or doubt, or look at her from a distance; what matter if they killed me now, and one tear came to bury me? Therefore I rushed ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... Swithin, where it never rains but it pours. He'd held out for a big advance, and he'd got it. Also he'd invested part of it in some of the giddiest raiment them theatrical clothing houses can supply. While a manicure was busy puttin' a gloss finish on his nails, he has his Mongolian valet display the rest of his wardrobe, as far as ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... triumphantly upon the stool under the yellow gas-light. His strong, heavily-featured face had somehow ceased to be commonplace. It had acquired an individual distinction of its own. He looked up at her with a clear, bold eye, in which, despite its gloss of good-humour, she ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... et sanguis, et tres unum sunt. Sicut in coelo tres sunt, Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus, et tres unum sunt.' This most important word Sicut clearly shows how the disputed passage, from having been a Gloss crept into the text. And on the first page prior to the Seven Catholic Epistles is the Prologue of St. Jerome, bearing his name in uncials, which Porson and other learned men think spurious. See Porson's Letters to Travis, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... Quaker incident did not happen to me, but to Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth I have twice heard it, at an interval of ten or twelve years, with little or no variation, and have given it as exactly as I could remember it. The gloss which your sister, or you, have put upon it does not strike me as correct. Carlisle drew no inference from it against the honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour of their surprising coolness—that they should be capable of committing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... everything how could you really expect anything else now." Thackeray was often weak from this same tendency—he meant Becky Sharp to be largely excused by the reader on these grounds, as he tries to excuse several others of his characters; but his endeavours in this way to gloss over "wickedness" in a way, do not succeed—the reader does not carry clear in mind as he goes along, the suggestions Thackeray has ineffectually set out and the "healthy hatred of scoundrels" Carlyle talked about has ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... apple-pies in Boston. Dave scented patronage in his "citified" air; he and other young men at the table—young men who helped about the farm—resented everything about the stranger from the self-satisfied poise of his head to the aggressive gloss on his riding-boots. ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... here to justify the past, gloss over the problems of the present, or propose easy ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... her, a forlorn, pathetic figure in black, waving a farewell to me as I stood on the wharf. She wore, I remember, a low collar, and well do I mind the way it showed off the slim whiteness of her throat; well do I mind the high poise of her head, and the silken gloss of her hair. The grey eyes were clear and steady as she bade good-bye to me, and from where we stood apart, her face had all the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... generally from eighteen to twenty feet; the leaf is between four and six inches long, and its breadth three or four, very smooth, and terminating in a point like that of the orange tree, but differing from it in color; of a dull green, without gloss, and not so thickly set upon the branches. The blossom is first white, then reddish, and contains the rudiments of the kernels or berries. When fully developed, the pericarp or seed-vessel is a pod, which grows not only from the branches, but the stem of the tree, and is ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... like his cloak, his manners want the nap And gloss of court; but of this fire he says. Nay swears, it was no wicked wilfulness, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... N. newness &c. adj.; novelty, recency; immaturity; youth &c. 127; gloss of novelty. innovation; renovation &c. (restoration) 660. modernism; mushroom, parvenu; latest fashion. V. renew &c. (restore) 660; modernize. Adj. new, novel, recent, fresh, green; young &c. 127; evergreen; raw, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... permitted himself a moment of exultation over his youth. Science had not yet taken out of him the nerves that leap to the touch of a woman's palm—the right woman. Ten years' deep, patient, absorbing dissection of pathologic tissue had not rendered the gloss and glow of a girl's cheek less velvet-soft. On the contrary, the healthy, wholesome flesh, the matured beauty of this mountain maid seemed of more worth than any fame to be wrung from the niggard hands of the Royal Academy. The absorption of the true scientist was completely broken ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... die in the Lord are blessed, on account of two things which immediately follow. For they enter into most sweet rest, and enjoy most delicate refreshment. Concerning their rest it immediately follows. "Even so saith the spirit" (that is, says the gloss, the whole Trinity), for they rest from their labors. "And it is a pleasant bed on which they take their rest, who, as is aforesaid, die in the Lord." For this bed is none other than the sweet consolation of the Creator. Of this consolation he speaks ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... and it is, indeed, perhaps the most unfailing characteristic of great manner in painting. Compare a dog of Edwin Landseer with a dog of Paul Veronese. In the first, the outward texture is wrought out with exquisite dexterity of handling, and minute attention to all the accidents of curl and gloss which can give appearance of reality, while the hue and power of the sunshine, and the truth of the shadow on all these forms is necessarily neglected, and the large relations of the animal as a mass of color to the sky or ground, or other parts of the picture, utterly lost. ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... with a mixture of starch, sour oranges, gum arabic and red ochre. This mixture is always boiled. I can recommend the 'Chinos' in this dodge, who are all adepts in all sorts of 'adulteration' schemes. They even add some grease to this mixture so as to give the beans that brilliant gloss which you see sometimes." In Trinidad the usual way of obtaining a gloss is by the curious operation known as "dancing," which is performed on the moistened beans after the clay has been sprinkled on them. It is a quaint sight to see a circle of seven ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... Windmills, first invented in the dry country of Asia Minor, were used in Normandy as early as the year 1105, (Vie privee des Francois, tom. i. p. 42, 43. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... man I seem; the guilt, Try what I will, I cannot roll off from me; The equivocal demeanor of my life Bears witness on my prosecutor's party. And even my purest acts from purest motives Suspicion poisons with malicious gloss. Were I that thing for which I pass, that traitor, A goodly outside I had sure reserved, Had drawn the coverings thick and double round me, Been calm and chary of my utterance; But being conscious of the innocence Of my intent, my uncorrupted will, I gave way to my humors, to my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... said, "this is just the thing she'd like to go with the mittens. There's style about that cap; feel the gloss of it." ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... flat; the nap's worn off, And howsoe'er we turn and trim the stuff, The gloss is gone that looked at first so gaudy; 'Tis now no jest to hear young girls talk bawdry. But plots and parties give new matters birth, And state distractions serve you here for mirth. At England's cost poets now purchase fame; While factious heats destroy us, without shame, These wanton Neroes fiddle ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... under-fired; indeed I believe that under-firing is far more the cause of stained-glass perishing than the use of untrustworthy pigment or flux; although it must always be borne in mind that the use of a soft pigment, which will "fire beautifully" at a low heat, with a fine gloss on the surface, is always to be avoided. The pigment is fused, no doubt; but is it united to the glass? What one would like to have would be a pigment whose own fusing-point was the same, or about the same, as that of the glass ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... and his chest was deep rather than broad, but the muscle was all in the right place, rippling down in long, low curves from neck to shoulder, and from shoulder to elbow. His work at the anvil had developed his arms to their utmost, and his healthy country living gave a sleek gloss to his ivory skin, which shone in the lamplight. His expression was full of spirit and confidence, and he wore a grim sort of half-smile which I had seen many a time in our boyhood, and which meant, I knew, that his pride had set iron hard, and ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... be firm ground. He waded toward wallowing. This is a perilous way of living and the sad little end of Euphemia, flushed and coughing, left him no doubt in many ways still more exposed to the temptations of the sentimental byway and the emotional gloss. Happily this is a book about Lady Harman and not an exhaustive monograph upon Mr. Brumley. We will at least leave him the refuge ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... Thus, with regard to the mass, he says that the Catholic liturgy contained the inadmissible idea that we must pray to God to accept the Body of His Son as a sacrifice; if this were to be explained in a gloss, either the words of the liturgy would have to be falsified by the gloss, or the gloss by the words of the liturgy. It would be wrong and foolish to run into danger unnecessarily about so troublesome a word. He ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... let us not blink the truth - hurries both him and them into the grave. And when we find a man persevering indeed, in his fault, as all of us do, and openly overtaken, as not all of us are, by its consequences, to gloss the matter over, with too polite biographers, is to do the work of the wrecker disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard; but to call him bad, with a self-righteous chuckle, is to be talking in one's sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... went on, "how things will take the gloss of humor, looking back. That cloudburst was anything but funny at the time; it was miserably exasperating to stand there drenched, with the comfortable quarters of the mining company in sight, cut off by an impassable washout. And it was wretched ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... Mothe left his lute behind him. He had accepted the part allotted to him half as a jest and half for the sake of the adventure it promised, but Villon had put a less pleasant gloss on this open-faced masquerade, nor had the blunt question, Why are you in Amboise? been easy of answer. Or rather, the answer was easy, but one he did not relish in its naked truth. If to be the secret almoner of the King's love for the Dauphin had been the sole reply to the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... the Union"; "our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country";—these are the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battlecries of a nation struggling for existence; these are the mottoes which can give a just and adequate expression to the Cause in which you have enlisted. Sir, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... to-night,' said Cuchulainn to his father. 'Go from us with a warning to the Ulstermen. I am forced to go to a tryst with Fedelm Noichride, [Note: Gloss incorporated in the text: that is, with her servant,' etc.] from my own pledge that went ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown

... the moment, Marigny concealed his uneasiness: by a display of good humor he hoped to gloss over the palpable absurdity of his earlier statements ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... spoken like an oracle, my boy! And if you reply 'Yes,' there will be a case for Euripides; for our tongue will be unconvinced, but not our mind. (In allusion to the well-known line of Euripides, Hippol.: e gloss omomoch ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... first set up as a Baal Habaas or respectable pillar of the synagogue; for even in the smallest Chevra the high hat comes next in sanctity to the Scroll of the Law, and he who does not wear it may never hope to attain to congregational dignities. The gloss on that hat was wonderful, considering it had been out unprotected in all winds and weathers. Not that Mr. Belcovitch did not possess an umbrella. He had two,—one of fine new silk, the other a medley of broken ribs and cotton rags. Becky had given him the first to prevent the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... on at first," said the Lady Brenhilda to her attendant. "Affectation of severe morals, of deep learning, and of rigid rectitude, assumed by this wicked old man, made me believe in part the character which he pretended; but the gloss is rubbed off since he let me see into his alliance with the unworthy Caesar, and the ugly picture remains in its native loathsomeness. Nevertheless, if I can, by address or subtlety, deceive this arch-deceiver,—as he has taken from me, in a great measure, every other kind of assistance,—I will ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... be as cheap as may be without shabbiness; think more about the colour of your shirt than about the gloss or texture of your coat; be always as clean as your occupation will, without inconvenience, permit; but never, no, not for one moment, believe, that any human being, with sense in his skull, will ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett



Words linked to "Gloss" :   rubric, visual aspect, radiancy, rub, lip-gloss, refulgency, refulgence, excuse, colour, comment, glaze, colour of law, simulacrum, justify, effulgence, polish, wordbook, glossary, color of law, guise, French polish, face value, smoothness, translate, rationalize, radiance, pretense, smooth, annotate, shine, apologise, account, render, interpret, burnish, color, pretext, semblance, apologize, appearance



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