glimpse

• IPA^(key): /ɡlɪmps/

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• Rhymes: -ɪmps

glimpse (plural glimpses)

1. A brief look, glance, or peek.

   I only got a glimpse of the car, so I can tell you the colour but not the registration number.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Samuel Rogers

     Here hid by shrub wood, there by glimpses seen.

   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326:

     Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

2. A sudden flash.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Light as the lightning glimpse they ran.

3. A faint idea; an inkling.

glimpse (third-person singular simple present glimpses, present participle glimpsing, simple past and past participle glimpsed)

1. (transitive) To see or view briefly or incompletely.

   I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.

2. (intransitive) To appear by glimpses.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Drayton to this entry?)

• perceive, notice, detect, espy, spot, catch sight of

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