gloss
UK/ɡlɒs//ɡlɔs/
gloss noun: a surface shine or luster.
Noun (1)
gloss (usually uncountable, plural glosses)
- A surface shine or luster.
- Synonyms:
- brilliance, gleam, luster, sheen, shine
- A superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
- .
- To me more dear, congenial to my heart, / One native charm than all the gloss of art.1770, [Oliver] Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, a Poem, London: […] W[illiam] Griffin, […], →OCLC
Verb (1)
gloss (third-person singular simple present glosses, present participle glossing, simple past and past participle glossed)
- To give a gloss or sheen to.
- To make (something) attractive by deception
- You have the art to gloss the foulest cause.1722, Ambrose Philips, The Briton
- To become shiny.
- Used in a phrasal verb: gloss over (“to cover up a mistake or crime, to treat something with less care than it deserves”).
Noun (2)
gloss (plural glosses)
- A brief explanatory note or translation of a foreign, archaic, technical, difficult, complex, or uncommon expression, inserted after the original, in the margin of a document, or between lines of a text.
- All this, without a gloss or comment, / He would unriddle in a moment.1684, Samuel Butler, Hudibras
- He was a prolific annotator - writing around fifty thousand glosses in as many as twenty manuscripts.2021, Mary Wellesley, The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts, page 9
- Synonyms:
- gloze, annotation
- Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
- Synonyms:
- glossary
- An expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
- An extensive commentary on some text.
- Synonyms:
- commentary, discourse, discussion
- An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
- This volume is thus not a narrowly defined treatment of the Code of Professional Responsibility but rather represents a "common law" gloss on it.1979, American Bar Foundation., Annotated code of professional responsibility, page ix
- Judicial Gloss on Test [section title]2007, Bruce R. Hopkins., The law of tax-exempt organizations., page 76
- A definition or explanation of a word sense.
- Dictionary entries comprise two essential parts, the headword ('lemma') and the author's explanation ('gloss').2011, Gabriele Stein, “The linking of lemma to gloss in Elyot's Dictionary (1538)”, in Olga Timoleeva, Tanja Saily, editor, Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie
- Therefore, for many of the Hebrew words in this book, I have provided more than one gloss (using a slash to separate alternatives, or double slashes when a single slash would be ambiguous), in order to give you a sense of the possible meanings of nuances […].2019, Jonathan Kline, A Proverb a Day in Biblical Hebrew, page xi
Verb (2)
gloss (third-person singular simple present glosses, present participle glossing, simple past and past participle glossed)
- To add a gloss to (a text).
gloss meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu
gloss in Tamil
- மிளிர், மிளிர் வெள்ளை, மிளிர் சிவப்பு, மிளிர் கருப்பு
gloss in Urdu
- آب, چمک دمک, دکھاوا, قلعی, تفسیر, تشریح
gloss in Bengali
- গ্লস
gloss in Telugu
- గ్లోస్
More languagesFewer languages
- gloss in Malayalam
- വ്യാഖ്യാനം vyākhyānaṁ
- gloss in Kannada
- ಹೊರಹೊಳಪು, ಬಾಹ್ಯಕಾಂತಿ, ಥಳಕು ಪಳಕು, ಹುಸಿತೋರ್ಕೆ
- gloss in Punjabi
- ਗਲੌਸ, ਗਲੋਸ
- gloss in Gujarati
- ગ્લોસ, ચળકાટ, ગ્લૉસ
- gloss in Odia
- ଗ୍ଲୋସ୍, ଗ୍ଲସ୍
- gloss in Sanskrit
- टिप्पणी ṭippaṇī, टिप्पण ṭippaṇa
- gloss in Assamese
- পোহৰ pühor
- gloss in Nepali
- ग्लोस, ग्लोस्, ग्लोस गर्न
- gloss in Arabic
- بَرِيق barīq
Examples of gloss in a sentence
- This clear varnish is available in gloss, matt and eggshell finishes.
- They glossed over the problem, hoping that the customers wouldn't notice.
- This book only glosses over quantum mechanics; it doesn't go into detail.
Synonyms of gloss
7 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of gloss
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | glosses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | glosses |
| present participle | glossing |
| past participle | glossed |
| past | glossed |
Origin of gloss
Probably from a North Germanic language, compare Icelandic glossi (“spark, flame”), glossa (“to flame”); or perhaps from dialectal Dutch gloos (“a glow, flare”), related to West Frisian gloeze (“a glow”), Middle Low German glȫsen (“to smoulder, glow”), German glosen (“to smoulder”); ultimately from Proto-Germanic *glus- (“to glow, shine”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰel- (“to flourish; be green or yellow”). More at glow.
From Middle English glosse, alteration of glose, from Old French glose, from Late Latin glōssa (“obsolete or foreign word requiring explanation”), from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, “language”). Doublet of glossa and gloze.
An alteration of Middle English glosen after Etymology 2, from Old French gloser; compare Medieval Latin glossāre.
Words formed from gloss
Phrases with gloss
Words that rhyme with gloss
Questions about gloss
- What does gloss mean?
- Gloss means a surface shine or luster.
- What is gloss in Tamil?
- Gloss in Tamil is மிளிர், மிளிர் வெள்ளை, மிளிர் சிவப்பு. See Gloss meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is gloss?
- Gloss can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce gloss?
- Gloss is pronounced /ɡlɒs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of gloss?
- The plural of gloss is glosses.
Words near gloss in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gloss (page history and authors); gloss (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gloss (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gloss (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); gloss (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); വ്യാഖ്യാനം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); gloss (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gloss (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); gloss (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); gloss (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); टिप्पण (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); পোহৰ (Assamese) (page history and authors); gloss (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-us-gloss.ogg.
Cite this entry: “gloss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gloss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.