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Dazzle vs Blaze - What's the difference?

dazzle | blaze | Related terms |

In transitive terms the difference between dazzle and blaze

is that dazzle is to confuse the sight of by means of excessive brightness while blaze is to mark or cut (a route, especially through vegetation), or figuratively, to set a precedent for the taking-on of a challenge.

In intransitive terms the difference between dazzle and blaze

is that dazzle is to be overpowered by light; to be confused by excess of brightness while blaze is to shine like a flame.

dazzle

English

Verb

(dazzl)
  • To confuse the sight of by means of excessive brightness.
  • Dazzled by the headlights of the lorry, the deer stopped in the middle of the street.
  • * Milton
  • Those heavenly shapes / Will dazzle now the earthly, with their blaze / Insufferably bright.
  • * Sir H. Taylor
  • An unreflected light did never yet / Dazzle the vision feminine.
  • (figuratively) To render incapable of thinking clearly; to overwhelm with showiness or brilliance.
  • The delegates were dazzled by the originality of his arguments.
  • To be overpowered by light; to be confused by excess of brightness.
  • * Francis Bacon
  • An overlight maketh the eyes dazzle .
  • * Dryden
  • I dare not trust these eyes; / They dance in mists, and dazzle with surprise.

    Derived terms

    * dazzler * dazzlement

    Noun

    (s)
  • A light of dazzling brilliancy.
  • (uncommon) A herd of zebra.
  • * 1958', Laurens Van der Post, ''The lost world of the Kalahari: with the great and the little memory'' (' 1998 David Coulson edition):
  • We were trying to stalk a dazzle of zebra which flashed in and out of a long strip of green and yellow fever trees, with an ostrich, its feathers flared like a ballet skirt around its dancing legs, on their flank, when suddenly
  • * 2009 , Darren Paul Shearer, In You God Trusts , page 176:
  • Zebras move in herds which are known as "dazzles." When a lion approaches a dazzle of zebras during its hunt,
  • * 2010 , Douglas Rogers, The Last Resort: A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa , page 22:
  • I reached the lodge as a dazzle of zebras trotted across the dirt road into thorny scrub by the game fence, and a lone kudu gazed up at me from the short grass near the swimming pool.

    Synonyms

    * herd

    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:
  • ::