Word.ws English Dictionary

glown

glown is the past participle of glow.

Meaning of glow

Verb

glow (third-person singular simple present glows, present participle glowing, simple past glowed or (dialectal) glew, past participle glowed or (dialectal) glew or (dialectal) glown)

  1. (intransitive) To emit heat and light without a flame.
    • Iron glows red hot when heated to near its melting point.
  2. (intransitive) Of a fire: to emit heat and light.
    • The fire was still glowing after ten hours.
  3. (intransitive) To emit light brightly and steadily as if heated to a high temperature; to shine.
    • [N]ovv glovv'd the Firmament / VVith living Saphirs: […]1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC, signature...
  4. (intransitive) To be very hot; also, to be on fire; to burn.
    • [T]he torrid Zone / Glovvs vvith the paſſing and repaſſing Sun.1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 59, lines...
  5. (figuratively, intransitive) Of a colour: to be bright; also, of a thing: to have a bright colour.
    • The new baby’s room glows with bright, loving colours.
  6. (figuratively, intransitive) Of a person: to display intense emotion.
    • a healthy glow

See all 18 meanings of glow

Origin of glown

Perhaps a survival of Middle English *glowen, *iglowen, from Old English glowen, ġeglōwen, past participle of Old English glōwan (“to glow”); equivalent to glow + -n.

Phrases with glown

Questions about glown

What is glown the past participle of?
Glown is the past participle of glow.

Words near glown in the dictionary

  1. glowlamp
  2. glowlamps
  3. glowless
  4. glowlight
  5. glowlights
  6. glown
  7. glown up
  8. glownigger
  9. glowniggers
  10. gloworm
  11. gloworms

Source and license

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