Word.ws English Dictionary

gliff

/ɡlɪf/

gliff noun: a quick glance.

Noun

gliff (plural gliffs)

  1. (Scotland, archaic) A quick glance.
  2. (Scotland, archaic) An unexpected view of something startling.
  3. (Scotland, archaic) A sudden fright.
  4. (Scotland, archaic) A short moment.
    • [W]ill ye come out and speak just a gliff to ane that has mony thanks to gi'e ye?— […] Wad ye but come out a gliff, man, or but say ye're listening?— […]1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter IX, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume I (The Black Dwarf), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]...

Verb

gliff (third-person singular simple present gliffs, present participle gliffing, simple past and past participle gliffed)

  1. (Scotland, archaic, transitive) To glimpse.

Forms of gliff

Noun
pluralgliffs
alternative formglift
Verb
third-person singular presentgliffs
present participlegliffing
past participlegliffed
pastgliffed

Origin of gliff

Compare Middle English glyffen (“to give a glancing look; to become startled or frightened”).

Words that rhyme with gliff

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gliff

What does gliff mean?
Gliff means a quick glance.
What part of speech is gliff?
Gliff can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gliff?
Gliff is pronounced /ɡlɪf/.
What is the plural of gliff?
The plural of gliff is gliffs.

Words near gliff in the dictionary

  1. glidings
  2. glidy
  3. Gliese
  4. Gliese 581
  5. Glifada
  6. gliff
  7. gliffed
  8. gliffing
  9. gliffs
  10. gliflozin
  11. gliflozins

Source and license

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