Word.ws English Dictionary

glim

UK/ɡlɪm/

glim noun: brightness; splendour.

Noun

glim (countable and uncountable, plural glims)

  1. (obsolete) Brightness; splendour.
  2. (archaic, slang) A light; a candle; a lantern; a fire.
    • 'Let's have a glim,' said Sikes, 'or we shall go breaking our necks, or treading on the dog. Look after your legs if you do!'1837, Charles Dickens, chapter 16, in Oliver Twist
    • "Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way.1851, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick
  3. (archaic, slang) An eye.
  4. (archaic, slang) A pair of glasses or spectacles.
  5. (archaic, slang) A look; a glimpse.
  6. (archaic, slang) Gonorrhea.
  7. (archaic, slang) Fake documents claiming the loss of property by fire (for use in begging).
    • Tayler Tom lent me a shillin wish I send inklosed and yu must porn sumthing for anuther shilling and get Joe the Loryer to rite a fake for William not a glim (loss by fire) but a brakd say as e ad a hors fell downe with the mad staggurs an broke all is plates and dishes an we are starvin you can sa...1851, Henry Mayhew, “Of the 'Screevers,' or Writers of Begging-Letters and Petitions”, in London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1, page 312

Verb

glim (third-person singular simple present glims, present participle glimming, simple past and past participle glimmed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To brand on the hand.
    • Profligate women were glimm'd for that villany.1714, Memoirs of the Right Villainous John Hall
  2. (dated, slang) To illuminate.
  3. (dated, slang) To see; to observe.
    • About 9 o'clock he showed up and he knew me the moment he glimmed me.1918, Tommy West, The Long, Long Trail in the World of Sport
    • Heibers further states he glimmed the following on Maxwell Street on a Sunday morning[…]1943 December 11, “Pipes for Pitchmen”, in Billboard, page 55

glim meaning in Tamil and Urdu

glim in Tamil

கணநேரத் தோற்றம்

glim in Urdu

جھلک

Forms of glim

Noun
pluralglims
Verb
third-person singular presentglims
present participleglimming
past participleglimmed
pastglimmed

Origin of glim

From Middle English glim, glimme (“radiance; shining brightness”), of uncertain further origin. Perhaps from Old English gleomu (“splendor”) and/or Old Norse *glim, *glima, both apparently from Proto-Germanic *glimō, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to gleam, shimmer, glow”). Compare Norwegian Nynorsk glim, dialectal Old Swedish glim, glimma.

Words formed from glim

Words that rhyme with glim

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about glim

What does glim mean?
Glim means brightness; splendour.
What is glim in Tamil?
Glim in Tamil is கணநேரத் தோற்றம். See Glim meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is glim?
Glim can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce glim?
Glim is pronounced /ɡlɪm/ (UK).
What is the plural of glim?
The plural of glim is glims.

Words near glim in the dictionary

  1. glifozins
  2. glift
  3. glifts
  4. glike
  5. glikes
  6. glim
  7. glime
  8. glimed
  9. glimepiride
  10. glimes
  11. glimflashy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glim (page history and authors); glim (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glim (Urdu Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-glim.ogg.

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