Other forms: gleaming, gleams, gleamed
To gleam is to shine softly and steadily. A polished table, a wet road under a streetlight, a knife in a drawer.
The light is always reflected rather than made, which is what separates gleam from glow: a lamp glows, and the brass beside it gleams. It suits clean and polished things especially, so it turns up wherever somebody has been working hard — gleaming taps, a gleaming kitchen. As a noun a gleam can be tiny and figurative, since a gleam in the eye means an idea has just occurred, and usually a mischievous one.
Middle English gleme covered a shaft of light, part of a comet's tail, a reflected sparkle, the dawn, and anything fleeting. Old English glǣm stands behind it, from a root meaning simply to shine.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰley- — to shine
Proto-Germanic
*glaimiz — brightness; splendour
Old English
glǣm — gleam
Middle English
glem
English, today
gleam
Built from
From Middle English glem, gleam, gleme (“shaft of light; part of a comet’s tail; reflected sparkle; dawn; daylight; radiance (physical or spiritual); something fleeting”), from Old English glǣm (“gleam”), from Proto-Germanic glaimiz (“brightness; splendour”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰley- (“to shine”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Looking
First appears in chapter 19 of A Man Called Ove.
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