Word.ws English Dictionary

glistening

glistening is the present participle and gerund of glisten.

Noun

glistening (plural glistenings)

  1. The appearance of something that glistens.
    • My eyes had adjusted to the faint starlight and I could make out pale glistenings and white glow of bones which had worked their way free of clinging flesh.2008, Dan Simmons, Song of Kali
  2. A fluid-filled microvacuole within a lens.

Meaning of glisten

Verb

glisten (third-person singular simple present glistens, present participle glistening, simple past and past participle glistened)

  1. (intransitive) 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

See all 2 meanings of glisten

Forms of glistening

pluralglistenings

Words formed from glistening

Questions about glistening

What does glistening mean?
Glistening means the appearance of something that glistens.
What is glistening the present participle and gerund of?
Glistening is the present participle and gerund of glisten.
What part of speech is glistening?
Glistening is a noun.
What is the plural of glistening?
The plural of glistening is glistenings.

Words near glistening in the dictionary

  1. glisten
  2. glistened
  3. glistener
  4. glisteners
  5. glisteneth
  6. glistening
  7. glisteningly
  8. glistenings
  9. glistens
  10. glisteny
  11. glister

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glistening (page history and authors); glisten (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: “glistening.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/glistening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.