15 uses
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Definition
a quick look or partial understanding
The exact meaning of glimpse can depend upon its context. For example:
- "I caught a glimpse of her when I was walking to class." — a very quick look
- "I glimpsed at the headlines." — looked quickly
- "Reading the book gave me a glimpse of the life of a devout Muslim immigrant in America." — a quick, incomplete view
- She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's sail!Chapters 130-132 — The Hat; The Pequod meets the Delight; The Symphony (90% in)
- If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.Chapters 4-6 — The Counter-Pane; Breakfast; The Street (74% in)
- At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary.Chapters 7-9 — The Chapel; The Pulpit; The Sermon (27% in)
- But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.Chapters 16-18 — The Ship; The Ramadan; His Mark (78% in)
- Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?Chapters 22-24 — Merry Christmas; The Lee Shore; The Advocate (50% in)
- Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.Chapters 40-42 — Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (53% in)
- I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.Chapters 55-57 — Monstrous Pictures of Whales; Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales; Whales in Paint.... (25% in)
- Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges.Chapters 55-57 — Monstrous Pictures of Whales; Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales; Whales in Paint.... (94% in)
- Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness.Chapters 58-60 — Brit; Squid; The Line (49% in)
- For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.Chapters 61-63 — Stubb Kills a Whale; The Dart; The Crotch (3% in)
- Not the wondrous cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg.Chapters 94-96 — A Squeeze of the Hand; The Cassock; The Try-Works (38% in)
- Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible.Chapters 103-105 — Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton; The Fossil Whale; Does the Whale Diminish (48% in)
- Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger.Chapters 124-126 — The Needle; The Log and Line; The Life-Buoy (8% in)
- But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and not finding anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her boats; and though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.Chapters 127-129 — The Deck; The Pequod meets the Rachel; The Cabin—Ahab and Pip (47% in)
- One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances.Chapters 133-135 — The Chase—First Day; The Chase—Second Day; The Chase—Third Day (83% in)
There are no more uses of "glimpse" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
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