Word.ws English Dictionary

blick

/blɪk/

blick verb: to shine, gleam.

Verb (1)

blick (third-person singular simple present blicks, present participle blicking, simple past and past participle blicked)

  1. (transitive) To shine, gleam.
    • Shirley Steynes Bluey took a deep breath as he entered the main street; nothing new under the sun-lamp as white pinks blicked across the street in a line of heat-glazed asterisks1978, Michael Wilding, The Tabloid Story Pocket Book, page 82
    • The lancing sunlight blicked sharps of light from the scattering of sand on the marble of the plinth.2006, Hugh Cook, The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster, page 646
  2. (ambitransitive, nonce-word) To make, or cause to make, a soft, crisp sound.
    • The recorder blicked off, and the tape hissed to the end of the reel in silence.1988, Sheila Radley, The chief inspector's daughter, page 171
    • He pulled out a cigarette lighter and blicked it.2005, Clyde White, Garbage Angel: Sarah's Story, page 16

Noun (1)

blick (plural blicks)

  1. The brightening or iridescence appearing on silver or gold at the end of the cupelling or refinishing process.
    • The nearer the process approaches to the “Blick,” the slower is the formation of litharge, till at last it can only be continued by a very strong fire.1870, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, page 417
    • It was also found advantageous not to complete cupellations in the cupel furnace, but to stop the operation some time before the Blick, and to transfer the alloy to the refining furnace, in which cupellation is completed and the silver refined;1874, John Arthur Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy, page 511

Verb (2)

blick (third-person singular simple present blicks, present participle blicking, simple past and past participle blicked)

  1. (intransitive) Of gold or silver, to exhibit blick.
    • When the cupellation is nearly finished, a play of colors is seen, and the button [sc. of silver] suddenly brightens or “blicks,” and becomes white, and is free from lead.1870, Karl Remigius Fresenius, System of instruction in quantitative chemical analysis, § 226, page 530
    • The English cupelling furnaces are used; the bars of rich bullion being fed continually until the silver blicks, the litharge running into small iron pots for removal.1881, United States. Bureau of the Mint ·, Report of the Director of the Mint Upon the Statistics of the Production of the Precious Metals in the United States, page 355

Noun (2)

blick (plural blicks)

  1. A sawed-off length of something.
    • Witness here described many blicks of wood cut out of trees on this line showing ages of marks.1832, Cornelia G. Goodrich et al. Vs. West Lumber Company, Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court, page 113
    • Method of producing short boards as boards for boxes, cases or the like, characterized by the fact that the log previous to or after the ends thereof being cut away as usual is cut into short logs or blicks of about the length of the boards to be produced,1914, Frans Hugo Johansson, “No. 158,342 Short Board Production”, in The Canadian Patent Office Record and Register of Copyrights, page 3031

Noun (3)

blick (plural blicks)

  1. (Multicultural-London-English, slang) A pistol.
    • Fix up, look sharp. Don't make me get the blicks out, get dark.2003 July 21, “Fix Up, Look Sharp” (track 6), in Boy In Da Corner, performed by Dizzy Rascal
    Synonyms:
    blicky

Verb (3)

blick (third-person singular simple present blicks, present participle blicking, simple past and past participle blicked)

  1. (Multicultural-London-English, slang, transitive) To shoot up (fire bullets at).
    • Thinkin' like Roddy, got a stick in the box (Roddy) / Hide in another car, we just blickin' the opps (Bah)2023 May 24, “Bounce”, PGF Nuk (lyrics)
    • I'ma blick niggas all in they coffin2024 April 30, “Euphoria” (5:28 from the start)performed by Kendrick Lamar

Examples of blick in a sentence

  • On her first day, as she walked into work[…][s]he blicked-in at the time clock[…]2014, Lynn Russell, The sweethearts, page 231 (large print edition):
  • Commonly, as it cools, it emits a sudden gleam or flash of light[…]but as this gleam or “blick” is exhibited by gold as well as by silver[…]1881, Edward John Chapman, Practical Instructions for the Determination by Furnace Assay of Gold and Silver in Rocks and Ores, page 46:
  • When the blick ( or coloured films ) just disappears, close the doors for a few minutes and then remove the cupels, taking the usual precautions against the button spitting.1903, William A. Macleod, Charles Walker, Metallurgical Analysis and Assaying, page 268:
  • As the last of the lead is oxidized the iridescence suddenly disappears and the surface brightens or “blicks."1914, Edward Garfield Mahin, Quantitative Analysis, page 483:

Synonyms of blick

Forms of blick

Verb
third-person singular presentblicks
present participleblicking
past participleblicked
pastblicked
Noun
pluralblicks

Origin of blick

Perhaps onomatopoeic; perhaps an error for, or a nonce alteration of, blink or click; perhaps a continuation of Middle English bliken (compare blicker), which may have survived in dialect despite not being attested in print for 500 years.

From German Blick (“look, glance, twinkle, flash”), from Middle High German blic, from Old High German blik, blich, from Proto-West Germanic [Term?], from Proto-Germanic *blikiz (“shine, appearance, look”), related to *blīkaną. Cognate with Dutch blik, Danish blik, Icelandic blik (“gleam, sheen”), Old English blice (“sheen, denuded site”).

Probably from replacing the initial letter C of click with the letter B in Blood slang.

Words that rhyme with blick

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blick

What does blick mean?
Blick means to shine, gleam.
How do you use blick in a sentence?
On her first day, as she walked into work[…][s]he blicked-in at the time clock[…]
What part of speech is blick?
Blick can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce blick?
Blick is pronounced /blɪk/.
What is the past tense of blick?
The past tense of blick is blicked.

Words near blick in the dictionary

  1. Bliar
  2. bliaus
  3. bliaut
  4. bliauts
  5. blicant
  6. blick
  7. blicked
  8. blicked up
  9. Blickenstaff
  10. Blickenstaffs
  11. blicker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blick (page history and authors). 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-blick.wav.

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