gloss
noun
- optical property describing the ability of a surface to reflect light in a specular direction
- type of paint
- brief marginal notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text
verb
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L23398 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ɡlɒs/ / /ɡlɔs/ / /ɡlɑs/
noun
Etymology: From Middle English glosse, glose, from Late Latin glōssa (“obsolete or foreign word requiring explanation”), from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, “language”). Doublet of glossa.
- A brief explanatory note or translation of a foreign, archaic, technical, difficult, complex, or uncommon expression, inserted after the original, in the margin of a document, or between lines of a text.
“All this, without a gloss or comment, / He would unriddle in a moment.”
“He was a prolific annotator - writing around fifty thousand glosses in as many as twenty manuscripts.”
- Synonym of glossary, a collection of such notes.
- An expression requiring such explanatory treatment.
- An extensive commentary on some text.
- An interpretation by a court of a specific point within a statute or case law.
“This volume is thus not a narrowly defined treatment of the Code of Professional Responsibility but rather represents a "common law" gloss on it.”
“Judicial Gloss on Test [section title]”
- A definition or explanation of a word sense.
“Dictionary entries comprise two essential parts, the headword ('lemma') and the author's explanation ('gloss').”
“Therefore, for many of the Hebrew words in this book, I have provided more than one gloss (using a slash to separate alternatives, or double slashes when a single slash would be ambiguous), in order to give you a sense of the possible meanings of nuances […].”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English glossen, glosen, from Old French gloser and Medieval Latin glossāre.
- To add a gloss to (a text).