Word.ws English Dictionary

glen

/ɡlɛn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

pin pen merger/ɡlɪn/

glen noun: a secluded and narrow valley, especially one with a river running through it; a depression between hills; a dale.

glen: a secluded and narrow valley, especially one with a river running through it; a depression between...
Image: Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

glen (plural glens)

  1. A secluded and narrow valley, especially one with a river running through it; a depression between hills; a dale.
    • What riches too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those forest-shrouded glens and peaks? And beyond, and beyond again, ever new islands, new continents perhaps, an inexhaustible wealth of yet undiscovered worlds.1871, Charles Kingsley, “Down the Islands”, in At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. […], volume I, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 41
    • In the glens of the hills about Strathsporran are many noble and nimble stags. But I have never set foot in my house there, for it is carpeted throughout with the tartan of my clan.1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC

Proper noun capitalized: Glen

Glen

  1. A Scottish habitational surname from Scottish Gaelic for someone who lives in a valley.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname.
    • Miller suffered a little when Glen Chapple and Mark Clinton came together but finished the spell with figures of five for 35 from 11 overs, mirroring the performances earlier when Chapple and Mahmood undermined the Warwickshire innings.2010 May 18, Mike Averis, “Warwickshire's Andrew Miller takes five wickets then Lancashire bite back”, in The Guardian
  3. A river in England, mainly in Lincolnshire.
  4. A river in Northumberland, England, a tributary of the River Till.
  5. A village in northern County Donegal, Ireland; in Irish An Gleann from gleann (“glen”).
  6. A town in Alcorn County, Mississippi.
  7. A census-designated place in Beaverhead County, Montana.
  8. An unincorporated community in Sioux County, Nebraska, situated in a glen.
  9. An unincorporated community in the town of Bartlett, Carroll County, New Hampshire.
  10. A town in Montgomery County, New York, named after Jacob Glen.

Noun (2) capitalized: Glen

Glen (plural Glens)

  1. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Glen of Imaal Terrier.

glen meaning in Marathi and Nepali

glen in Marathi

secluded and narrow valley
आड āḍ, खोरा khorā

glen in Nepali

ग्लेन्

Examples of glen in a sentence

  • Ings, glens, and fens of the Highlands.
  • The name was probably derived from shaw, a woodly glen, and fleet, a running stream .
  • Glen, Ryan, care to work it out on the remix and combine your mass appeal for a megahit movie?

All 11 example sentences with glen

Forms of glen

pluralglens
pluralGlens

Plural of glen: glens

Origin of glen

From Middle English glen, borrowed from Irish gleann and Scottish Gaelic gleann, Old and Middle Irish glend, glenn (“mountain valley”), from Proto-Celtic *glendos (“valley”), hypothetically from Proto-Indo-European *glend- (“shore”) but the word may have been borrowed from a non-Indo-European substrate language. Compare Manx glion, Welsh glyn. Doublet of glyn.

Words formed from glen

Phrases with glen

29 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with glen

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about glen

What does glen mean?
Glen means a secluded and narrow valley, especially one with a river running through it; a depression between hills; a dale.
What is glen in Marathi?
Glen in Marathi is आड (āḍ), खोरा (khorā). See Glen meaning in Marathi.
What part of speech is glen?
Glen can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce glen?
Glen is pronounced /ɡlɛn/ (UK).
What is the plural of glen?
The plural of glen is glens.

Words near glen in the dictionary

  1. gleisols
  2. gleization
  3. glemanserin
  4. glembatumumab
  5. Glemsford
  6. glen
  7. Glen Alice
  8. Glen Allen
  9. Glen Almond
  10. Glen Alpine
  11. Glen Alvie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glen (page history and authors); Glen (page history and authors); glen (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-glen.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Glen.wav.

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