glisten
/ˈɡlɪsən/
glisten verb: to reflect light with a glittering luster; to sparkle, coruscate, glint or flash.
Verb
glisten (third-person singular simple present glistens, present participle glistening, simple past and past participle glistened)
- To reflect light with a glittering luster; to sparkle, coruscate, glint or flash.
- The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 202
Noun
glisten (plural glistens)
- A glistening shine from a wet surface.
- In his clear northern flesh and his fair hair was a glisten like sunshine refracted through crystals of ice.1920, D.H. Lawrence, chapter 1, in Women in Love
glisten meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
glisten in Hindi
- to reflect light with a glittering luster
- चमकना camaknā
glisten in Tamil
- பிரகாசி, மின்னு, மினுங்கு, பளீரிடு ஜொலி ஒளிர்
glisten in Urdu
- جھلکنا
glisten in Malayalam
- glisten, shining
- മിന്നൽ minnal
- to glisten
- മിന്നുക minnuka
More languagesFewer languages
- glisten in Kannada
- ಬೆಳ್ಪಸೆ, ಹೊಳೆ, ಪ್ರಕಾಶಿಸು, ಥಳಥಳಿಸು
- glisten in Arabic
- لَمَعَ lamaʕa
- glisten in Persian
- برق زدن barq zadan
Examples of glisten in a sentence
- The boat's wake left two strands of white water that glistened in the moonlight.
- The gourmet 'treat' glistened repellently. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot chopstick.
- The sunlight glistened in the dew on the web.
Synonyms of glisten
Forms of glisten
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | glistens |
| present participle | glistening |
| past participle | glistened |
| past | glistened |
| Noun | |
| plural | glistens |
Origin of glisten
From Middle English glisnen, glistnen, from Old English glisnian, itself from Proto-West Germanic *glisnōn, while ultimately deriving from Proto-Germanic *glisnōną.
Words formed from glisten
Words that rhyme with glisten
Questions about glisten
- What does glisten mean?
- Glisten means to reflect light with a glittering luster; to sparkle, coruscate, glint or flash.
- What is glisten in Hindi?
- Glisten in Hindi is चमकना (camaknā). See Glisten meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is glisten?
- Glisten can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce glisten?
- Glisten is pronounced /ˈɡlɪsən/.
- What is the past tense of glisten?
- The past tense of glisten is glistened.
Words near glisten in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: glisten (page history and authors); glisten (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glisten (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); മിന്നുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); glisten (Kannada 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-uk-glisten.ogg.
Cite this entry: “glisten.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/glisten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.