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verb
Gloss  v. i.  
1.
To make comments; to comment; to explain.
2.
To make sly remarks, or insinuations.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gloss" Quotes from Famous Books



... are leaner than of old, and have aged ten years in two months. You did go forth as smart and trim a fighting ship as over answered helm, and now you are like the same ship when the battle and the storm have taken the gloss from her sides and torn the love-pennants from her peak. Yet am I right glad to see you sound in wind ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Lord are blessed, on account of two things which immediately follow. For they enter into most sweet rest, and enjoy most delicate refreshment. Concerning their rest it immediately follows. "Even so saith the spirit" (that is, says the gloss, the whole Trinity), for they rest from their labors. "And it is a pleasant bed on which they take their rest, who, as is aforesaid, die in the Lord." For this bed is none other than the sweet consolation of the Creator. Of this consolation he speaks himself by the Prophet ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... side of the question. They write like men who feel, as Bollandus their founder did, that under no circumstances is it right to tell a lie. They never hesitate to avow their own convictions and predilections. They draw their own conclusions, and put their own gloss upon facts and documents; but yet they give the documents as they found them, and they enable the impartial student—working not in trammels as they did—to make a sounder and truer use of them. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... weaker. Some disputants endued with great intelligence fell upon the position urged by others like hawks darting at meat thrown up into the air, while some amongst them versed in the interpretations of religious treatises and others of rigid vows, and well-acquainted with every commentary and gloss engaged themselves in pleasant converse. And, O king, that platform crowded with gods, Brahmanas and great Rishis looked extremely handsome like the wide expanse of the firmament studded with stars. O monarch, there was then no Sudra near that platform of Yudhisthira's mansion, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... great wave disturbs the ocean cold And throws the bottom waters to the sky, Strange apparitions on the surface lie, Great battered vessels, stripped of gloss and gold, And, writhing in their pain, sea-monsters old, Who stain the waters with a bloody dye, With unaccustomed mouths bellow and cry And vex the waves ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... in the particularly dull boarding-house where Clara was temporarily shelved; where, nevertheless, she had not conceded an inch of her class, nor a ray of her luster to circumstance. This surprising luster was the gloss of her body, the quality of her clothes and accessories, the way she traveled and the way she smiled. It was the bloom of luxury she kept about her person through all her varying surroundings. She had never to rise ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings in ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... were past the age of sixty-five. After that they had their weekly allowance with the groceries. In the evenings of bright days you saw Peggy at her best. When the dusk fell, and the level sands shone with a deep smooth gloss, you would see strange figures bowing with rhythmic motions. These figures were those of women. All the women of the village turn out on the sand to hunt for sand-eels. To catch a sand-eel requires long practice. You take two iron hooks, and work them down deep in the sand when the tide has ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... certainly have rejected the preliminaries, and all other advances towards a pacification; that, therefore, they ought not to grudge an expense which had already proved so beneficial to the tranquillity of Europe. Sir Joseph Jekyll replied, that whatever gloss might be put upon such measures, they were repugnant to the maxims by which England in former times had steered and squared its conduct with relation to its interest abroad; that the navy was the natural strength of Great Britain—its best defence and security; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... diabolical story; And gave the least whisper of slips and falls, As that Gallery does in the Dome of St. Paul's, Which, as all the world knows, by practice or print, Is famous for making the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... brooklet fell With plashy pour, that scarce was sound, But only quiet less profound, A stillness fresh and audible: A yellow leaflet to the ground Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... descending the ravine which separated the route from the hillside where the fortunate plants were growing. He promised, however, to point out the locality from afar, and to show, by a certain changeable gloss proper to the leaf, the precise stratum of the calisaya amongst the belts of the forest. This promise he forgot to execute more particularly, but it appeared that the locality would never be excessively hard to find, marked as it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... that now," said Grace. "Your house will get rubbed down by and by, and the new gloss taken off; and so will your wife, and you will all be cosey and easy as an old shoe. Young mistresses, you see, have nerves all over their house at first. They tremble at every dent in their furniture, and wink when you come near it, as if ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Americans towards British subjects can scarcely be too strongly represented for the facts. A bitter antagonism was naturally the feeling of each side so lately in the deadly struggle of a civil war. To gloss over this state of things, deplorable as it was, and as its results have often been, is to belie history, and to no good or useful end. Had the contention been akin to a mere friendly tug-of-war, as some would have ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... If we are not lucky enough to light upon some empty cottages to sleep in I fancy the gloss will be taken out of this uniform before I see you again." He picked up his cap, shook ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... not blink the truth—hurries both him and them into the grave. And when we find a man persevering indeed, in his fault, as all of us do, and openly overtaken, as not all of us are, by its consequences, to gloss the matter over, with too polite biographers, is to do the work of the wrecker disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard; but to call him bad, with a self-righteous chuckle, is to be talking in one's sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the proud disdain, These simple blessings of the lowly train; To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art; Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play, 255 The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway; Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, Unenvied, unmolested, unconfin'd: But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, With all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all seemed barren and unpromising. . . . There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth. . . . In such cases, the writer has a certain fire and {7} alacrity inspired into him by a consciousness, that let it fare how it will ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... of that only bride of the Holy Spirit, and which made thee turn toward me for some gloss, is ordained for all our prayers so long as the day lasts, but when the night comes, we take up a contrary sound instead. Then we rehearse Pygmalion,[1] whom his gluttonous longing for gold made a traitor and thief and parricide; and the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... Wild would still have been surnamed 'The Great.' For scarce a chap-book appeared in the year of Jonathan's death that did not expose the only right and true view of his character. 'His business,' says one hack of prison literature, 'at all times was to put a false gloss upon things, and to make fools of mankind.' Another precisely formulates the theory of greatness insisted upon by Fielding with so lavish an irony and so masterly a wit. While it is certain that The History of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild is as noble a piece of irony ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... made it and the men who sang its praises. They hated lawyers, and were jealous of wealthy merchants. "These lawyers," said Amos Singletary, "and men of learning, and moneyed men that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves. They mean to be managers of the Constitution. They mean to get all the money into their hands, and then they will swallow up us little folk, like the great ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... works of Mystical Theology exercised a greater influence on the writers of the Middle Ages.[30] A word must also be said about the Gloss to which S. Thomas so often refers, and which he quotes as an authority. The term "Gloss" was applied to the brief running commentaries on the Bible which were in vogue in the Middle Ages. These brief paraphrases were also known as Postillae, and they were frequently written in between the lines of the text of the Bible, whence the name Interlinear ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... unexampled, is explained by the scope of the work, as stated in the translator's prologue (p. 9). It was written to explain the allusions to natural objects met with in the Scriptures or in the Gloss. It was, in fact, an account of the properties of things in general; an encyclopaedia of similes for the benefit of the village preaching friar, written for men without deep—sometimes without any— learning. Assuming no previous information, and ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... of rice for the markets involves, first, the threshing, and second, the milling, which removes the husks, and, third, the polishing to produce the pearly white gloss which so many ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... rich plain cloth, finished without any gloss. It is a good ground for embroidery, either for curtains or altar-cloths. ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... that the immixture of the colors with these kinds of oils gave them a very firm consistence, which, when dry, was proof against wet; and, moreover, that the vehicle lit up the colors so powerfully, that it gave a gloss of itself without varnish; and that which appeared to him still more admirable was, that it allowed of blending [the colors] infinitely better than tempera. Giovanni, rejoicing in this invention, and being a person of discernment, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... is kept clean by means of tall Sky-Scrapers. Nowhere is there a more impressive example of American inventive Genius than the array of Sky-Scrapers seen from New York Harbour, day and night, year in, year out, scraping away the germ-laden dust and refuse and imparting a bright and cheerful gloss to the surface ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford

... that I will use obscure words," replied the artist; "what do you take me for? I swear to you that I will gloss it over in such a way that nobody will ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... who had conquered for his country one great empire on the frozen shores of Ontario, and another under the tropical sun near the mouths of the Ganges. It was not in the nature of things that popularity such as he at this time enjoyed should be permanent. That popularity had lost its gloss before his children were old enough to understand that their father was a great man. He was at length placed in situations in which neither his talents for administration nor his talents for debate appeared ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Forrester. Mr Frampton made no attempt to gloss over the wickedness of that unhappy act of passion. But he showed how fully he made allowances for the poor blundering offender, and how he, at least, saw more to pity than to ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... and trouble, but very little other vegetation. We have seen in previous chapters what the industries of the capital, both native and foreign, are, and what they amount to; there is also a manufacture of glazed tiles, quite artistic, but not to be compared in beauty of design, colour and gloss with the ancient ones. Teheran is dependent on the neighbouring provinces and ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... may dismiss the rest more slightly. She was highly accomplished, and had acquired those elegant manners to be expected from one who, in early youth, had been the companion of a princess; yet she had not learned to substitute the gloss of politeness for the reality of feeling. When settled in the lonely regions of Glennaquoich, she found that her resources in French, English, and Italian literature, were likely to be few and interrupted; and, in order to fill up the vacant time, she bestowed a part of it upon the music and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... intersecting the thread of the narrative, and introduced solely for a similar purpose of illustration. It does not wear the character of the simple narrative in which it appears, but of the surcharge of the gloss or note of a later age, founded upon the fanciful traditions then prevailing with respect to the situation of the ancient Paradise." This certainly is cutting the knot; and, if erected into a precedent by the geologist, would no doubt greatly facilitate the labor of reconciliation. It would, however, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... of theological books for poor students we find, in 1271, a gift by will to the University of Paris (R. 119) of a private library, containing twenty-seven books. Even if the students possessed books, the master "read" [23] and commented from his "gloss" at great length on the texts being studied. Besides the mere text each teacher had a "gloss" or commentary for it—that is, a mass of explanatory notes, summaries, cross-references, opinions by others, and objections to the statements of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... little figure came, not insignificant (I mean), but looking very light and slender in the moving shadows, gently here and softly there, as if vague of purpose, with a gloss of tender movement, in and out the wealth of trees, and liberty of the meadow. Who was I to crouch, or doubt, or look at her from a distance; what matter if they killed me now, and one tear came to bury me? Therefore I rushed out at once, as if shot-guns were unknown yet; not from any real courage, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... the moment, Marigny concealed his uneasiness: by a display of good humor he hoped to gloss over the palpable absurdity of his earlier ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... work again, and found that they covered the fibre with a kind of gum, which gave it gloss and strength. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Mellicent's horror of ridicule, and felt indignant with the girl who could stand by, secure in her own beauty and elegance, and have no sympathy for the misfortune of a friend. "If you have a bottle of peerless gloss, or any of those shiny things with a sponge fastened on the cork, I can make them look quite respectable, and no one will have ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... "The mere gloss of polite society," he returned. "There is no soundness in her heart. We know that, for the tree is judged by ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... often in spite of its being a tender subject—a salutary form of self-discipline, which will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something to excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves that we have committed faults, and open our eyes wide to all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... of a small lion; he was not lithe and slender and long like a cougar or leopard; the tail, as with all jaguars, was short, while the girth of the body was great; his coat was beautiful, with a satiny gloss, and the dark-brown spots on the gold of his back, head, and sides were hardly as conspicuous as the black of the equally well-marked spots ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... became clearly convinced how indisputably it was the code of sanctity, and hence of truth itself; how really unphilosophical it was to take offence at a few little imperfections of style, not less absurd than the vanity of one who despises everything that wears not the gloss of elegant forms; what still greater absurdity to imagine that such a collection of books, so long held in religious veneration, should not possess an authentic origin, boasting, as they do, such a vast superiority over the Koran, and the ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... it quickly, as though trying to gloss it over. But she would not have it that way. She felt stronger, and she was going to see just what there was there. She took the prints and studied them, though her hand trembled. Hers was a remarkable mind. It took only seconds to see what others would have seen only in ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... wherewith to cure him, will not readily be able to profit him. For if the sick man be ashamed to confess to the physician, the medicine is not adapted to that of which he is ignorant." Let the princes and cities, therefore, believe these authors rather than a single gloss upon a decree questioned and rejected by those who are skilled in divine law. Wherefore, since a full confession is, not to say, necessary for salvation, but becomes the nerve of Christian discipline ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous

... which is before Poems G.M.H. was sixteen years old. It is in Spenserian stanza: the imperfect copy in another hand has the first 15 stanzas omitting the 9th, and the author has written on it his motto, Batraxos de pot akridas os tis erisda, with an accompanying gloss to explain his allusions. Though wholly lacking the Byronic flush it looks as if in- fluenced by the historical descriptions in 'Childe Harold', and might provide a quotation for a tourist's guide to Spain. The history ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... where we heard our pasteur preach was whitewashed out of all memory of any mural decoration that its earlier religion may have given it; but the gloss of the whitewash was subdued by the dim light that stole in through the long slits of windows. We sat upon narrow wooden seats so very hard that I hope the old dukes and their court were protected by ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... the great gusher. By day its greasy blackness glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick passed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear the thick splash of the gusher that rose and fell, like the beating of a giant's heart, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... can cover your despicable actions with the gloss of military duty, but I know you now as a revengeful liar. Treat this house as you please. I refuse to have any more dealings or words with you. I'll provision you and your men, as I would any others suffering from hunger, but that ends all. If you search this ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... lampblack. If the alcohol is good, it will all be dissolved in two days; then shake and use. If the materials were of the proper kind, the polish correctly prepared, it will dry in about five minutes, giving a gloss equal to patent leather. Using aniline dyes instead of the lampblack, you can have it any desired color, and it can be used on ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... the seat of a tight pair of black silk pantaloons, which shine as if varnished. They must have been made of the stuff called "everlasting," or perhaps of the same piece as Christian's garments in the Pilgrim's Progress, for he put them on two summers ago, and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But, now, with nods and greetings among friends, each matron takes her husband's arm, and paces gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away, after arranging sunset walks with their favored bachelors. ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... some final instructions. It must be conceded that they look like business in their dark-blue flannel shirts, their "reinforced" riding-breeches, the substantial boots, and the field blouses and broad-brimmed campaign hats that Arizona suns and storms have long since robbed of gloss or freshness. The faces are strong and virile in almost every case. It is ten days since the razor has profaned a single chin, and very stubbly and ugly do they look, but long experience has taught them that the sooner the beard ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... to all who approached, forcing them to rise or fall to their true level, unconscious of the test applied. Her presence was comfortable, her voice had motherly tones in it, her eyes a helpful look. Even the soft hue of her dress, the brown gloss of her hair, the graceful industry of her hands, had their attractive influence. Sylvia saw and felt these things with the quickness of her susceptible temperament, and found herself so warmed and won, that soon it cost her an effort to withhold anything that tried or troubled her, for ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... high clear forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always thought of as a "brow"; the long reach of her eyes—it came out at this juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that of Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and hatted, after her mother's refined example, with such an avoidance of extremes that it was always spoken of at Woollett as "their own." Though this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had lasted long enough to make him feel all the advantage, as ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... explain depression? Yes, I am hooked into the "Gem," but only for some lines written on a dead infant of the editor's [2] which being, as it were, his property, I could not refuse their appearing; but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in first page, and whisked through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest candidateship. Brought into so little space,—in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... Keepers, in general very low. Several of both kinds look in at the chemist's while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase there, to be 'picked up.' One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, and disordered, enters hurriedly and cries savagely, 'Hond us a gloss of sal volatile in wather, or soom dommed thing o' thot sart!' Faces at the Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable. Keepers likewise given this morning to standing about solitary, with their hands in their pockets, looking down at their boots as they fit them into cracks ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... Lydia Rhodes—was a plump and vivacious little brunette of forty, with a gloss on her black hair and a sparkle in her black eyes. She still retained a good deal of the superabundant vitality of youth; in her own house, when the curtains were down and the company not too miscellaneous, she was sometimes equal to a break-down or a cake-walk. She was impelled by social ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... at the slowly spreading leaves She glanced up ever and anon, If yet the shadow of the eaves Had paled the dark gloss they put on. But while her smile like sunlight shone, The life danced to such blossom blown That all the roses ever known, Blanche of Provence, Noisette, or Yonne, Wore no such tint as this pale streak That damasked half the rounding cheek ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... in front of the building, and the other halfway down the precipice, whither the wind had cast it. Entering this desolate spot, the refugee officer very coolly took from his pocket a short pipe, which, from long use, had acquired not only the hue but the gloss of ebony, a tobacco box, and a small roll of leather, that contained steel, flint, and tinder. With this apparatus, he soon furnished his mouth with a companion that habit had long rendered necessary to reflection. So soon as a large column ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... floor near the widow Broadnax's chair. It had been left there by a careless servant, who had used a portion of the mixture of red paint and sour buttermilk with which it was filled, to give the wide hearth its fine daily gloss. Miss Penelope had not observed it because she was always oblivious to everything else while hanging over the coffee-pot. The widow Broadnax had seen the cup at once because it was slightly in the way of her foot; and she was quick ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... foolish men have set to work to make, in six months, their diamond of nature, the exact cut and gloss of other men's pastes, and, nervously watching the process, have suffered torture; luckily Charles Gatty was not wise enough for this; he saw nature had distinguished her he loved beyond her fellows; here, as elsewhere, he had faith in nature—he believed that ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... attempt to gloss the cruelties perpetrated in Belgium. My individual wish is to see them pictured as crimson as possible, that men may the fiercer revolt against the shame and horror of this red butchery called war. But this is a record of just one observer's ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... you are taking the gloss all off 'em, too, and I want 'em to look new when I wear ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... prefects, colonels, treasurers, deputies, academicians, bishops and peers of the realm, from whom nothing more was required in return for the all-powerful support bestowed upon them, but to wear a pious gloss, sometimes publicly take the communion, swear furious war against everything impious or revolutionary,—and above all, correspond confidentially upon "different subjects of his choosing" with the Abbe d'Aigrigny,—an amusement, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... by the historian on whom under ordinary circumstances we place less dependence. If so disgraceful an outrage as that described by Herodian was, indeed, committed by the head of the Roman State on a foreign potentate, Dio, as a great State official, would naturally be anxious to gloss it over. There are, moreover, internal difficulties in his narrative; and on more than one point of importance he contradicts not only Herodian, but also Spartianus. It is therefore not improbable that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... Germany's refusal was given by Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg's colleague, (the German Foreign Secretary, Herr von Jagow.) It may be paraphrased in the well-known gloss upon Shakespeare: 'Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, but four times he that gets his blow ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... kept going by lies? Dear me, if we all told the truth there would be an end of everything! I am a philosopher in my way, Monseigneur,—and I assure you that a real serious truth told in Paris without any gloss upon it, would be like an earthquake in the city,—great houses would come down and numbers of people would be ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... dignified air and comfortable look of Martin, and grudged him the frequency with which he was invited to Squire Bull's table. By degrees, he began to conform his own uncouth manner to an imitation of his. He wore a better coat, which he no longer rubbed against the wall to take the gloss from off it; he ceased to interlard all his ordinary speech with texts of Scripture; his snuffle abated audibly; he gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody, and lost, in a great measure, his aversion to Christmas ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... This makes all the fibers lie flat. They are then sent through steel rollers, the water squeezed out, and finally carried over and around twenty-five revolving steam-heated cylinders which completely dry the paper and put the needed gloss ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... desolated, but he had sold three animals the day before to an English milord, a very big gentleman, and his party. He had just one horse, but it was a beauty. The horse was trotted out. It was well groomed—they always are, and arsenic does impart a nice gloss to the hide—and looked imposing, a tall three-quarter-bred ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... when a man was trying to part with a house he had to listen to so much abuse of it from people who came to see it that if somebody did not stick up for the house—say all that could be said for it, and gloss over its defects- -he would end by becoming so ashamed of it he would want to give it away, or blow it up with dynamite. He said that reading the advertisement in the agent's catalogue was the only thing that reconciled him to being the owner of the house. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... excellent! spoken like an oracle, my boy! And if you reply 'Yes,' there will be a case for Euripides; for our tongue will be unconvinced, but not our mind. (In allusion to the well-known line of Euripides, Hippol.: e gloss omomoch ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... and, on second thoughts, he added: nor must it be forgotten that the Book of Deuteronomy was written when we were a wandering tribe come out of the desert of Arabia, without towns or cities, without a Temple, without an Ark—ours having fallen into the hands of the Philistines. He continued his gloss till Mathias held up his hand and asked Hazael's permission to speak: the words that had been quoted from Deuteronomy, those in which the Scriptures speak of God as if he were a man, attributing to him the acts and motives ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... context plainly shows that Hamlet meant that his mother, by self-denial, would gradually acquire that virtue in which she was so conspicuously wanting. Yet, for lack of a little knowledge of the history of the word employed, the other monstrous gloss has received almost universal and ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... said, "this is just the thing she'd like to go with the mittens. There's style about that cap; feel the gloss of it." ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... had, in accordance with the regulations, to make out a passport for a rich and highly respectable lady of his acquaintance, who, in spite of a slight disfigurement, was very vain of her personal appearance. His native politeness prompted him to gloss over the defect, and, after a moment's reflection, he wrote among the items of personal description: "Eyes dark, beautiful, tender, expressive, but ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... ear they bend, And lure him on, blest Freedom to defend; That, once recognised, once establisht there, The world might learn her profer'd boon to share. But artful arguments their plan disguise, Garb'd in the gloss that suits a monarch's eyes. By arms to humble Britain's haughty power, From her to sever that extended shore, Contents his utmost wish. For this he lends His powerful aid, and calls the opprest his friends. The league proposed, he lifts his ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... the same but slower and more sonorous, more grave on the prolonged termination of the last word; at Paris the voices of the nuns drew it out and put a gloss on it at the same time, turned into satin its final sound, rendered it less dull, less spaced, less ample. The "Gloria in Excelsis" differed; that of La Trappe was more primitive, more mounting, more sombre, interesting by its very barbarism, but less touching, for in its forms of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... may be allowed the phrase, at bottom much of a John Bull; much of a blunt 'true born Englishman'. There was a stratum of common clay under the rock of marble. He was voraciously fond of good eating; and he had a great deal of that quality called humour, which gives an oiliness and a gloss to ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... Boston. Dave scented patronage in his "citified" air; he and other young men at the table—young men who helped about the farm—resented everything about the stranger from the self-satisfied poise of his head to the aggressive gloss on his riding-boots. ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... theme. The theme is not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination of the artist has given itself full scope. We are sensible of the factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.[6] Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of which we speak. The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so familiar to the Master,[7] occurs there but once.[8] On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... may judge from their diction and from contemporary testimony, received their final form at about this time, though in many cases of older origin. It produced charming little songs which some of the later court poets admired sufficiently to gloss. But the cultured writers, just admitted to the splendid cultivated garden of Latin literature, despised these simple wayside flowers and did not care ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... owed not its peculiar charm to any regularity of feature; but to an ineffable sweetness of expression, and to youth's freshest bloom. Hafiz would have compared that smooth cheek to the tulip's flower. Her eye-lashes, of the deepest jet, and silken gloss, were of uncommon length. Her lips were apart, and disclosed small but exquisitely formed teeth. Their hue was not that of ivory, but the more delicate though more transient one of the pearl. One arm supported her head—its hand ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... appearance was one of great neatness, it was all too evident, if one observed with good eyes, that the edges of his shirt had been trimmed with the scissors until the hem narrowed close to the line of stitching; and his evening clothes in a strong light would have revealed not only the fatal gloss of long use, but also careful darning. The old saying that "Clothes make the man" was refuted in his case, however, as his arrogance was proclaimed ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... a prison, surely?" Mrs. MacDougall gasped. "Say the right word, man, and don't put your own gloss on things. It doesn't make them ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... soon after the appearance of English Fairy Tales. From a gloss in the MS. "vitty" Devonian for "decent," I conclude the tale is current in Devon. I should be obliged if the sender would ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... stripped from his waist upwards, and his huge body, with his great muscles swelling out like the gnarled roots of an oak, towered high above the soldier. The other, however, though near a foot shorter, was a man of great strength; and there was a gloss upon his white skin which was wanting in the heavier limbs of the renegade monk. He was quick on his feet, too, and skilled at the game; so that it was clear, from the poise of head and shine of eye, that he counted the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... polite reserve, to meet the entering visitor. This was a man more than ten years his junior, short of stature, with clear-cut features and thoughtful blue eyes contrasting with hair and moustache dark almost to blackness. His neatly brushed garments had a threadbare gloss, and his broad linen falling collar, though white and clean, was somewhat frayed. But his bearing was high-bred and distinguished, with an air of sober yet resolute earnestness. He wore no sword, and the hat which he carried in ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... "annotative" style with a parenthetic comment. The passage in brackets might be a gloss, but ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... No. Does he express it ingeniously, or with liveliness, with its seams, folds, breaks, and tissue. Assuredly not. When he places a feather at the brim of a hat, does he give it the lightness and floating grace that we see in Van Dyck, or Hals, or Velasquez? Does he indicate by a little gloss on a dead ground, in their form, or feeling of the body, the human physiognomy of a well adjusted coat, rubbed by a movement or worn with use? Can he, with a few masterly touches and taking no more trouble than things are worth, indicate lace-work, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... better to turn back. "My coat is much too shabby," he said to himself; "I can't show myself in any decent society." He took it off and looked at it on all sides. The back was getting shiny at the seams; at the elbows there was a dull silver gloss, and the border on the flaps of the breast even ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her. She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women are always saying, isn't it? They draw this distinction when it is too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time, and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a minute of weakness—mere weakness of bodily will, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... in its means, princely in its ends. If the ultimate effect of commerce (permulti transibunt, &c.) were not something very different from what its pursuers imagine, the character would be a dangerous one to society at large, because it throws a gloss over the spirit of money-getting; but, meanwhile, nobody could paint it better, or has a greater right to recommend it, than he who has been the first to make it a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... who could bear the expense of gilding the existing temple, which cost more than twelve thousand talents. Its columns are of Pentelic marble, exquisitely proportioned, which I myself saw at Athens; but at Rome they were again cut and polished, by which process they did not gain so much in gloss as they lost in symmetry, for they now appear too slender. However, if any one who wonders at the expense of the temple in the Capitol were to see the splendour of any one portico, hall, or chamber in the house of Domitian, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... other public humbugs. For this they are not only seldom thanked, but frequently are kicked. Of course this sort of thing is wrong. A Reporter should be independent enough to meet the approaches of gentlemen of the Nincompoop persuasion with a flat rebuff. He should never gloss over a political humbug, whether he belongs to "our side" or not. He is not thanked for doing it, and, furthermore, he loses the respect and confidence of his readers. There are many amiable gentlemen ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... also becomes fit for sacrifice. For no land is impure of itself. A land becomes so only by contact." This passage is quoted by a Hindu writer with the same reference to the Code of Manu as the preceding one, but it is not found there and appears to be a gloss by a later writer, explaining how the country south of the Vindhyas, which is excluded by Manu, should be rendered fit for Aryan settlement. [8] Similarly in a reference in the Brahmanas to the migration of the Aryans eastward from the Punjab it is stated that Agni ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; A flower that dies, when first it 'gins to bud; A brittle glass that's broken presently; A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour. 156 ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... which tormented my friend in his youth, and still, perhaps, at odd times give him a prick in the midst of his enjoyments, and which after all have some foundation in justice, and point, in their confused way, to some honourable honesty within the reach of man. And at least, is not this an unusual gloss upon the eighth commandment? And what sort of comfort, guidance, or illumination did that precept afford my friend throughout these contentions? "Thou shall not steal." With all my heart! But am ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ambition, from motives of tidiness and pride, to at least remove all traces of the old. She felt that the chief sting of present deprivation lay in the evidence of its contrast with former plenty. She hated the image in her memory of her cottage glistening with the white gloss of paint, and would have weakened it if she could. Paulina Maria accordingly, standing on a kitchen-chair, had scrubbed with soap and sand the old paint-streaks as high as her long arms would reach, and had, at times, when his rheumatism would permit, set her tall husband to the task. The paint, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Brides Apparel must be made, and the Stufs, laces, lining, cuffs, and many other things are yet to be bought. Well, who can see an end of all your business! There's one piece of stuf is too light, and another too dark; the third looks dull and hath no gloss. And see here's three or four daies gon, and ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... said;—yet there is room for a gloss or commentary on what you say. "He who would bring back the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." What you bring away from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it—Benjamin Franklin! Be so good as to step ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... The latter introduces to us clumsy copies of these showy instrumental qualities, in order to reconcile us to vice and want of principle; while the Atheista Fulminato presents an exquisite portraiture of the same qualities, in all their gloss and glow, but presents them for the sole purpose of displaying their hollowness, and in order to put us on our guard by demonstrating their utter indifference to vice and virtue, whenever these and the like accomplishments are contemplated ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... not comprehend how it could take the gloss off either of them if they stood there a little and listened; nor yet what they had come out for. Just where there was a little life and gaiety they were to shut their eyes and put their fingers in their ears. But where it was so "nice and proper" it ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... inhabitants scattering the knaves to the four winds, the moment there was a fair occasion made for them to act. A single, energetic proclamation from Albany, calling a "spade a spade," and not affecting to gloss over the disguised robbery of these anti-renters, and laying just principles fairly before the public mind, would of itself have crushed the evil in its germ. The people of New York, in their general capacity, are not the knaves ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... speculatively at Donna. They would be two outcasts, however much their deed might be respected abstractly, however much official expressions of gratitude were employed to gloss over the fact. He might as well take one chance more. "We have already decided," he said boldly. "I hear you are building a new space ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe

... thoroughly, and were dangerous. Nevertheless, when the Commune, in March, 1871, broke into actual life, and Jean began to see what it all meant, he was terrified by the outburst and held back. Things which look seductive in theory, have a way of losing their gloss when they appear as hard realities, with accompaniments which do not belong to the ideals; and the rabble rout of half-drunk citizens who marched, shouting, through the streets of the 19th arrondissement, frightened Marie out of her senses. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... characters. The city of Canfu is built of wood and canes interwoven, just like our lattice-work of split canes, the whole washed over with a kind of varnish made of hempseed, which becomes as white as milk, having a wonderfully fine gloss. There are no stairs in their houses, which are all of one storey, and all their valuables are placed in chests upon wheels, which in case of fire can easily be drawn from place to place, without any ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... paint coat shall be wall size and primer. Second coat two parts flat wall paint & one part size. Finish with egg-shell wall paint. Plaster cornice to receive first coat of size, second coat half size & half enamel. Finish coat semi-gloss enamel. ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... occur in the character of these notes. There is a first time to everything, and it is first impressions which I have endeavored honestly to convey; but my first impressions of Europe were obtained years ago. The gloss and enthusiasm of novelty are wanting. The sober second thought is proverbial; but there is a sober second sight as well, and it is this I am about to take. Besides this, Europe is more familiar to everybody than the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... 'God Save the King,' has been construed into disloyalty to the Sovereign—and a laughable circumstance took place on his going to the same house a few nights back, which has already been made the subject of much merriment, both in conversation and caricature. It appears that Mr. Gloss'em, who is a shining character in the theatrical world, at least among the minors of the metropolis; and whose father was for many years a wax-chandler in the neighbourhood of Soho, holds a situation as clerk of the cheque to the Gentlemen Pensioners of his Majesty's household, as well ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... enemies than might have been expected. His manner had always been radiantly self-confident; but there was about him a conspicuous element of quick feeling, of warm humanity, which grew rather than diminished with his success. He was frank, too, and did not try to gloss over a mistake or a failure. Perhaps in his lordly way he felt he could afford himself a few now and then, he was so much cleverer ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... conduct was at first ascribed to Mary's sense of the infamy attending her purposed marriage, and her desire of finding some color to gloss over the irregularity of her conduct. But a pardon, given to Bothwell a few days after, made the public carry their conjectures somewhat further. In this deed, Bothwell received a pardon for the violence committed on the queen's person, and for "all other crimes;" a clause ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... thin coat of shellac is to be put on. When this has dried, it should be sanded lightly and then one or two coats of wax should be properly applied and polished. Directions for waxing are upon the cans in which the wax is bought. A beautiful dull gloss so much sought by finishers of modern furniture will be the result of carefully following ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics



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