glaze

UK/ɡleɪz/US/ɡleɪz/

verbB25 meanings Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,779 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: glazed, glazing, glazes

To glaze is to put a smooth, shiny coat on something. The sugary sheen brushed over a doughnut, the beaten egg painted onto a pie crust so it comes out golden, honey spooned over a ham halfway through roasting.

The noun is the coating itself. On pottery, glaze is the glassy layer fired onto a mug, which is what makes it shine and hold liquid. In building, to glaze is to fit glass into a window: the person who does it is a glazier, and double glazing is two panes with air trapped between them. Eyes glaze over when someone stops taking anything in, twenty minutes into a meeting. All of these come from the same place, which you can hear in the word: glass.

Definitions of glaze

1verbglazeTo brush a shiny coating over food so that it gleams.B2~2%
“She glazed the buns with warm apricot jam before they cooled.”
- Said"Glaze the buns while they're warm; it soaks in better."
- WrittenThe ham was glazed with mustard and honey and shone like furniture.
- UsedGlaze the pastry with beaten egg for a golden top.
- ContrastGlaze, not spread. Spreading leaves a layer you can taste; glazing leaves a shine you can see. spread →
- Not thisPouring sauce over meat is not glazing. Glaze is brushed thin and sets to a gloss.
- SimplyGlaze the cake with sugar. Now it is bright.
Patternglaze sth with + noun (egg, honey, syrup) · a glazed ham / doughnut · a glaze · glazing
2nounshinyA shiny coating on food or pottery.B2~56%
“The mug has a thick blue glaze that crackles near the handle.”
3verbglassyTo coat pottery with a glassy layer that is hardened in a kiln.B2~38%
“He glazed the bowls in grey and fired them overnight.”
4verbfitTo fit glass into a window or door.C1~2%
“The back of the house was glazed from floor to ceiling.”
5verbeyesOf eyes: to lose all expression because the person has stopped paying attention.B2~2%
“His eyes glazed over somewhere in the second hour.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

glaze is a shiny coating.

Remember it

gLAZE → the LAZY way to make it shine

The lazy way to make a plain bun beautiful: brush one shiny sweet coat over the top, and it glows in the shop window.

hooks ontolazy

Phrases it lives in

eyes glaze over — Someone stops listening and their face goes blank with boredom.

Where it comes from

Glaze is glass with a verb ending on it. Middle English glasen was built straight from glas, glass, which goes back to Old English glæs and Proto-Germanic glasą. To glaze a pot was to give it a coat of glass, and to glaze a window was to put glass in it. The sweet coat on a bun is the same idea borrowed by a baker.

Proto-Germanic
*glasą
Old English
glæs
Middle English
glasen
English, today
glaze

Built from

glas · Middle English — glass

From Middle English glasen, from glas (“glass”) (Modern English glass), from Old English glæs, from Proto-Germanic glasą. Related to glazen. In the sense of "overcompliment", originated in November 2021 and popularized throughout 2022, and may suggest either the spattering of semen on the complimented person, following "the visual of a donut being glazed", or sugarcoat without sexual connotation. The noun is from the verb.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, A Man Called Ove, Antiques & Collecting

First appears in chapter 21 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

glaze in the wild

Delftware is one of the types of tin-glazed pottery in which a white glaze is applied and usually decorated with metal oxides.
Delftware
The celadon color is classically produced by firing a glaze containing a little iron oxide at a high temperature in a reducing kiln.
Celadon
The term comes from the French word glace, which, when used in reference to a sauce, means "icing" or "glaze".
Demi-glace
Before its demise, in the face of environmental clean air restrictions, it was last used in the production of salt-glazed sewer-pipes.
Salt glaze pottery
The only commercial pottery in the UK currently licensed to produce salt glaze pottery is Errington Reay at Bardon Mill in Northumberland which was founded in 1878.
Salt glaze pottery

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Definitions of glaze

1verbglazeTo brush a shiny coating over food so that it gleams.B2~2%

“She glazed the buns with warm apricot jam before they cooled.”

Said"Glaze the buns while they're warm; it soaks in better."
WrittenThe ham was glazed with mustard and honey and shone like furniture.
UsedGlaze the pastry with beaten egg for a golden top.
ContrastGlaze, not spread. Spreading leaves a layer you can taste; glazing leaves a shine you can see. spread →
Not thisPouring sauce over meat is not glazing. Glaze is brushed thin and sets to a gloss.
SimplyGlaze the cake with sugar. Now it is bright.

Patternglaze sth with + noun (egg, honey, syrup) · a glazed ham / doughnut · a glaze · glazing

2nounshinyA shiny coating on food or pottery.B2~56%

“The mug has a thick blue glaze that crackles near the handle.”

3verbglassyTo coat pottery with a glassy layer that is hardened in a kiln.B2~38%

“He glazed the bowls in grey and fired them overnight.”

4verbfitTo fit glass into a window or door.C1~2%

“The back of the house was glazed from floor to ceiling.”

5verbeyesOf eyes: to lose all expression because the person has stopped paying attention.B2~2%

“His eyes glazed over somewhere in the second hour.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

glaze is a shiny coating.