Other forms: glints, glinting
To glint is to give out small quick flashes of light. Metal glinted, a glint of sunlight, eyes glinting.
The flashes are short and hard, which is what separates a glint from a gleam — a gleam is steady and a glint is sudden. A glint in the eye means amusement or mischief. Note that the word came into English from Scots, and belongs with gleam, glimmer and glisten.
1verbglintTo give out small quick flashes of light.
“The sun glinted on the windows of the passing train.”
glint is a flash of light.
Scots glint comes from Middle English glenten, probably from a Norse word meaning to shine. Gleam and glimmer are relatives.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰley-
Proto-Germanic
*glantijaną
Old Norse
*glenta
Middle English
glenten — to shine, gleam; flash
Scots
glint
English, today
glint
15th century. Borrowed from Scots glint, from Middle English glenten (“to shine, gleam; flash”), probably from Old Norse glenta, from Proto-Germanic glantijaną, causitive of Proto-Germanic glintaną (“to gleam, shine”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰley- (“to shine”). Cognate with Danish glente, Swedish glänta, Norwegian Nynorsk gletta (“to peep, look”), Middle High German glinzen; compare also Swedish glinta (“to slip, slide, gleam, shine”), Swedish glimt (“flash, glint, glimpse”), Norwegian Nynorsk glanta, gletta (“to glide, slip”). Reintroduced into literary English by Robert Burns.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA