Library / English Dictionary

GLIMMER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A slight suggestion or vague understanding

Example:

he had no inkling what was about to happen

Synonyms:

glimmer; glimmering; inkling; intimation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("glimmer" is a kind of...):

suggestion (an idea that is suggested)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A flash of light (especially reflected light)

Synonyms:

gleam; gleaming; glimmer

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("glimmer" is a kind of...):

flash (a sudden intense burst of radiant energy)

Derivation:

glimmer (shine brightly, like a star or a light)

glimmery (shining softly and intermittently)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Shine brightly, like a star or a light

Synonyms:

gleam; glimmer

Classified under:

Verbs of seeing, hearing, feeling

Hypernyms (to "glimmer" is one way to...):

radiate (cause to be seen by emitting light as if in rays)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Sentence examples:

Lights glimmer on the horizon

The horizon is glimmering with lights

Derivation:

glimmer (a flash of light (especially reflected light))

Credits

 Context examples: 

Dim dawn glimmered in the yard.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It is only when I look upon the untroubled faces of my comrades that I see some glimmer through the darkness.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Of such things he had not the faintest glimmering.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

There’s a glimmer of hope for the American bee population.

(Study Finds Mixed News About Bee Populations, VOA)

Frankenstein has daily declined in health; a feverish fire still glimmers in his eyes, but he is exhausted, and when suddenly roused to any exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent lifelessness.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Meg laughed, for she was glad to see a glimmer of Jo's old spirit, but she felt it her duty to enforce her opinion by every argument in her power, and the sisterly chats were not wasted, especially as two of Meg's most effective arguments were the babies, whom Jo loved tenderly.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The side of the quadrangle, in which she supposed the guilty scene to be acting, being, according to her belief, just opposite her own, it struck her that, if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the general's lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to the prison of his wife; and, twice before she stepped into bed, she stole gently from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery, to see if it appeared; but all abroad was dark, and it must yet be too early.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and interesting to me—the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lanterns.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)