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Ray vs Glimpse - What's the difference?

ray | glimpse |

As a proper noun ray

is from a (etyl) nickname meaning a king or a roe.

As a noun glimpse is

a brief look, glance, or peek.

As a verb glimpse is

to see or view briefly or incompletely.

ray

English

Etymology 1

Via (etyl), from (etyl) rai, from (etyl) .

Noun

(en noun)
  • A beam of light or radiation.
    • I saw a ray of light through the clouds.
  • (zoology) A rib-like reinforcement of bone or cartilage in a fish's fin.
  • (zoology) One of the spheromeres of a radiate, especially one of the arms of a starfish or an ophiuran.
  • (botany) A radiating part of a flower or plant; the marginal florets of a compound flower, such as an aster or a sunflower; one of the pedicels of an umbel or other circular flower cluster; radius.
  • (obsolete) Sight; perception; vision; from an old theory of vision, that sight was something which proceeded from the eye to the object seen.
  • * Alexander Pope
    • All eyes direct their rays / On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze.
  • (mathematics) A line extending indefinitely in one direction from a point.
  • (colloquial) A tiny amount.
    • Unfortunately he didn't have a ray of hope .
    Derived terms
    * death ray * gamma ray * manta ray * ray gun * stingray * X-ray

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To emit something as if in rays.
  • To radiate as if in rays
    • (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

    Etymology 2

    (etyl) (m), from (etyl) (m).

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A marine fish with a flat body, large wing-like fins, and a whip-like tail.

    • Etymology 3

    Shortened from array.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To arrange.
  • (obsolete) To stain or soil; to defile.
  • * 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , VI.4:
    • From his soft eyes the teares he wypt away, / And form his face the filth that did it ray .

    Etymology 4

    From its sound, by analogy with the letters chay, jay, gay, kay, which it resembles graphically.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The name of the letter ?/?, one of two which represent the r sound in Pitman shorthand.
    • Related terms
    * ar, in Latin and the name of the other Pitman r

    Etymology 5

    Noun

    (-)
  • (obsolete) Array; order; arrangement; dress.
  • * Spenser
    • And spoiling all her gears and goodly ray .

    Etymology 6

    Alternative forms.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (music)

    • Anagrams

    * English terms with multiple etymologies ----

    glimpse

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A brief look, glance, or peek.
  • :
  • *(Samuel Rogers) (1763-1855)
  • *:Here hid by shrub wood, there by glimpses seen.
  • *
  • *:Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.
  • A sudden flash.
  • *(John Milton) (1608-1674)
  • *:Light as the lightning glimpse they ran.
  • A faint idea; an inkling.

    • Verb

    (glimps)
  • To see or view briefly or incompletely.
    • I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.
  • To appear by glimpses.
    • (Drayton)

    Synonyms

    * perceive, notice, detect, spot, catch sight of