Cringe vs Blench - What's the difference?
cringe | blench | Synonyms |
A posture or gesture of shrinking or recoiling.
(dialect) A crick.
(dated) To bow or crouch in servility.
* Milton
* 1903 , ,
* 1904 , ,
To shrink, tense or recoil, as in fear, disgust or embarrassment.
* Bunyan
* 1917 , ,
(obsolete) To contract; to draw together; to cause to shrink or wrinkle; to distort.
* Shakespeare
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
Cringe is a synonym of blench.
In lang=en terms the difference between cringe and blench
is that cringe is to shrink, tense or recoil, as in fear, disgust or embarrassment while blench is to fly off; to turn aside.In obsolete|lang=en terms the difference between cringe and blench
is that cringe is (obsolete) to contract; to draw together; to cause to shrink or wrinkle; to distort while blench is (obsolete) to blanch.As nouns the difference between cringe and blench
is that cringe is a posture or gesture of shrinking or recoiling while blench is a deceit; a trick.As verbs the difference between cringe and blench
is that cringe is (dated|intransitive) to bow or crouch in servility while blench is to shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off or blench can be (obsolete) to blanch.cringe
English
Alternative forms
* (dialectal)Noun
(en noun)- He glanced with a cringe at the mess on his desk.
Verb
- Sly hypocrite, who more than thou / Once fawned and cringed , and servilely adored / Heaven's awful monarch?
- He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy.
- Leclere was bent on the coming of the day when Batard should wilt in spirit and cringe and whimper at his feet.
- He cringed as the bird collided with the window.
- When they were come up to the place where the lions were, the boys that went before were glad to cringe behind, for they were afraid of the lions.
- But he made no whimper. Nor did he wince or cringe to the blows. He bored straight in, striving, without avoiding a blow, to beat and meet the blow with his teeth.
- Till like a boy you see him cringe his face, / And whine aloud for mercy.
Derived terms
* cringeworthySee also
* crouch * winceAnagrams
*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.