Word.ws English Dictionary

blench

/blɛnt͡ʃ/

blench verb: to shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.

Verb (1)

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

  1. (intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
    • Blench not at thy chosen lot.a. 1870, William Cullen Bryant, The Battle-Field
    • This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfilment.1820, Francis Jeffrey, “Life of Curran”, in The Edinburgh Review May 1820
  2. (intransitive) To quail.
  3. (transitive) To deceive; cheat.
  4. (transitive) To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
    • Yesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench.2012 January 13, Polly Toynbee, “Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks”, in The Guardian
  5. (transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
  6. (intransitive) To fly off; to turn aside.
    • Though sometimes you do blench from this to that.c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Noun

blench (plural blenches)

  1. A deceit; a trick.
  2. A sidelong glance.
    • These blenches gave my heart another youth.1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 110”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC

Verb (2)

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

  1. (obsolete) To blanch.
    • The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 284

blench meaning in Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

blench in Urdu

برباد ہونا, پیچھے ہٹنا, سکڑنا

blench in Bengali

ভয়ে সরে যাওয়া, কুঁকড়ে যাওয়া

blench in Malayalam

flinch, shy (away), start
ചൂളുക, അറച്ചോ പേടിച്ചോ പുറകോട്ടു മാറുക, സംഭ്രമിച്ചു പിൻവാങ്ങുക, അധെെര്യപ്പെടുക, ആശങ്കിക്കുക, പരിങ്ങുക

Examples of blench in a sentence

  • Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings […]1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King:
  • Even a case-hardened monorailist must blench at the thought of the storm such a proposition would create.1964 July, “The mythology of monorails”, in Modern Railways, page 57:

Forms of blench

Verb
third-person singular presentblenches
present participleblenching
past participleblenched
pastblenched
Noun
pluralblenches

Origin of blench

From Middle English blench (noun) and blenchen (verb), from Old English blenċan (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-West Germanic *blankijan, from Proto-Germanic *blankijaną (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ-. Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).

Variant of blanch, from Middle English blanchen, blaunchen, from Old French blanchir (“to whiten, bleach”), from blanc (“white”), of Germanic origin; compare Middle English blenchen (“to turn pale", also "to flinch; deceive”), from Old English blenċan. More at blank.

Words formed from blench

Phrases with blench

Words that rhyme with blench

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blench

What does blench mean?
Blench means to shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
What is blench in Urdu?
Blench in Urdu is برباد ہونا, پیچھے ہٹنا, سکڑنا. See Blench meaning in Urdu.
How do you use blench in a sentence?
Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings […]
What part of speech is blench?
Blench can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce blench?
Blench is pronounced /blɛnt͡ʃ/.
What is the past tense of blench?
The past tense of blench is blenched.

Words near blench in the dictionary

  1. blemisht
  2. blemmed
  3. blemming
  4. Blemmyes
  5. blems
  6. blench
  7. blench holding
  8. blench holdings
  9. blenched
  10. blencher
  11. blenchers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blench (page history and authors); blench (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); blench (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); blench (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-blench.wav.

Cite this entry: “blench.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blench. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.