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glaring

UK/ˈɡlɛəɹɪŋ/US/ˈɡlɛɹɪŋ/
adjectiveB2+2 meaningsOccasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,029 of 15,258neutral

Glaring means too bright, or too obvious to miss. A bare bulb, or a mistake on the first page.

The light sense is the older one, and glaring sunlight is the kind you squint against. The commoner modern use is about errors, and a glaring mistake, a glaring omission and a glaring inconsistency are all standard, meaning nobody could possibly have failed to see it. That gives the word a note of accusation. There is also a person glaring, which means staring angrily, and that is a different verb entirely.

Definitions of glaring

  1. 1adjectiveglaringUnpleasantly bright.B2+

    “The glaring light made him shut his eyes.”

  2. 2adjectiveobviousObvious and impossible to overlook.B2

    “There is a glaring error on the second page.”

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-West Germanic

    *glāʀōn

  2. Old English

    *glærian

  3. Middle English

    glaren

  4. English

    glare

  5. English, today

    glaring

by surface analysis, glare + -ing. glare comes from Middle English glaren, from Old English glærian, from Proto-West Germanic glāʀōn. Cognate with dialectal Middle Dutch glariën (“to glisten; sparkle”), Low German glaren (“to shine brightly; glow; burn”), Middle High German glaren (“to shine brightly”). Related to glower, glass.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 16 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

Related words

  • glare