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Blaze vs Gaze - What's the difference?

blaze | gaze |

As nouns the difference between blaze and gaze

is that blaze is a fire, especially a fast-burning fire producing a lot of flames and light while gaze is gauze.

As a verb blaze

is to be on fire, especially producing a lot of flames and light.

blaze

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) blase, from (etyl) .

Noun

(en noun)
  • A fire, especially a fast-burning fire producing a lot of flames and light.
  • *
  • *:Long after his cigar burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze . When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals,.
  • Intense, direct light accompanied with heat.
  • :
  • *(John Milton) (1608-1674)
  • *:O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon!
  • The white or lighter-coloured markings on a horse's face.
  • :
  • A high-visibility orange colour, typically used in warning signs and hunters' clothing.
  • A bursting out, or active display of any quality; an outburst.
  • *(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
  • *:his blaze of wrath
  • *(John Milton) (1608-1674)
  • *:For what is glory but the blaze of fame?
  • A spot made on trees by chipping off a piece of the bark, usually as a surveyor's mark.
  • *Robert Carlton (B. R. Hall, 1798-1863)
  • *:Three blazes' in a perpendicular line on the same tree indicating a legislative road, the single ' blaze a settlement or neighbourhood road.
  • Etymology 2

    From (etyl) blasen, from (etyl) . See above.

    Verb

    (blaz)
  • To be on fire, especially producing a lot of flames and light.
  • To shine like a flame.
  • * (William Wordsworth)
  • And far and wide the icy summit blazed .
  • * , chapter=1
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path […]. It twisted and turned,
  • To make a thing shine like a flame.
  • To mark or cut (a route, especially through vegetation), or figuratively, to set a precedent for the taking-on of a challenge.
  • (slang) To smoke marijuana.
  • * Most commonly used in the infinitive, simple present, or simple past:
  • ::
  • * Or less commonly, in the present progressive:
  • ::
  • gaze

    English

    Verb

    (gaz)
  • To stare intently or earnestly.
  • * 1922 , (James Joyce), Chapter 13
  • Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.
    In fact, for Antonioni this gazing is probably the most fundamental of all cognitive activities ... (from Thinking in the Absence of Image)
  • * Bible, Acts i. 11
  • Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?
  • (poetic) To stare at.
  • * 1667': Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd, / And '''gaz'd a while the ample Skie — John Milton, ''Paradise Lost (book VIII)
  • Synonyms

    * gape, stare, look

    Troponyms

    * (to stare intently) ogle

    Derived terms

    * (l)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A fixed look; a look of eagerness, wonder, or admiration; a continued look of attention.
  • *
  • *:Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze , her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.
  • (lb) The object gazed on.
  • *(John Milton) (1608-1674)
  • *:made of my enemies the scorn and gaze
  • In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the relationship of the subject with the desire to look and awareness that one can be viewed.
  • *2003 , Amelia Jones, The feminism and visual culture reader , p.35:
  • *:She counters the tendency to focus on critical strategies of resisting the male gaze , raising the issue of the female spectator.
  • Derived terms

    * (l)

    References

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