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glower

UK/ˈɡlaʊə(ɹ)/US/ˈɡlaʊə(ɹ)/
verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — glow sits at #3,418leans spoken

Other forms: glowering, glowers

To glower is to stare angrily at somebody. Glower at him, a glowering look, glowering in the corner.

It is a sustained look rather than a glance, which is what makes it more menacing than a glare. Of a sky it means dark and threatening, so glowering clouds are the ones before a storm.

Definitions of glower

  1. 1verbglowerTo stare angrily at somebody.C1

    “The old man glowered at the children who had kicked their ball into his garden.”

glower is a staring.

Also accepted in games: glare

Where it comes from

Probably a Scots alteration of Middle English gloren, to stare or glare.

  1. Middle English

    gloren

  2. English, today

    glower

Built from

  • glouren · enh — to gleam; to glare, glower
  • glow · English — to stare

From an alteration (possibly Scots) of glore, from Middle English gloren, glouren (“to gleam; to glare, glower”); or from glow (“to stare”) obsolete, and ultimately from a Scandinavian (North Germanic) language. Cognate with Low German gloren (“to flicker; to glimmer”), Dutch gloren, Icelandic glóra. by surface analysis, glow + -er. See more at glare.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

Related words

  • glow
  • aglow