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Gaze vs Discern - What's the difference?

gaze | discern | Related terms |

Gaze is a related term of discern.


As a noun gaze

is gauze.

As a verb discern is

to detect with the senses, especially with the eyes.

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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    discern

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To detect with the senses, especially with the eyes.
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1875 , author=Jules Verne , title=The Survivors of the Chancellor , chapter=1 citation , passage=Meanwhile the brig had altered her tack, and was moving slowly to the east. Three hours later and the keenest eye could not have discerned her top-sails above the horizon.}}
  • To perceive, recognize, or comprehend with the mind; to descry.
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1842 , author=Charles Dickens , title=American Notes for General Circulation citation , passage=If they discern' any evidences of wrong-going in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they ' discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken.}}
  • To distinguish something as being different from something else; to differentiate.
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1651 , author=Thomas Hobbes , title=Leviathan citation , passage=The severity of judgement, they say, makes men censorious and unapt to pardon the errors and infirmities of other men: and on the other side, celerity of fancy makes the thoughts less steady than is necessary to discern exactly between right and wrong.}}
    He was too young to discern right from wrong.
  • To perceive differences.

    • Derived terms

    * discernible * discernment * indiscernible

    Anagrams

    * *