Cower vs Blench - What's the difference?
cower | blench | Related terms |
To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
* Dryden
* Goldsmith
To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
* Bryant
* Jeffrey
* 1998', Andrew Hurley (translator), , "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrnth", ' Collected Fictions , Penguin Putnam, p.255
(of the eye) To quail.
To deceive; cheat.
To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
* 2012 , Jan 13, Polly Toynbee, Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks , The Guardian
To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
To fly off; to turn aside.
* Shakespeare
A deceit; a trick.
* c. 1210 , MS. Cotton Caligula A IX f.246.
A sidelong glance.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) To blanch.
* 1934 , Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer , Harper Perennial (2005), p.283
Cower is a related term of blench.
As verbs the difference between cower and blench
is that cower is to crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear or cower can be (obsolete|transitive) to cherish with care while blench is to shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off or blench can be (obsolete) to blanch.As a noun blench is
a deceit; a trick.cower
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) kuren or from Scandinavian ((etyl) . Unrelated to coward, which is of Latin origin.Verb
(en verb)- He'd be useless in war. He'd just cower in his bunker until the enemy came in and shot him, or until the war was over.
- Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire.
- Like falcons, cowering on the nest.
See also
* coward * cowardiceEtymology 2
blench
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) blenchen, from (etyl)Verb
(es)- Blench not at thy chosen lot.
- This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfillment.
- "This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."
- Yesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench .
- Though sometimes you do blench from this to that.
Noun
(blenches)- Feir weder turnedh ofte into reine; / An wunderliche hit makedh his blench .
- These blenches gave my heart another youth.
Etymology 2
From (etyl) .Verb
(es)- The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.