glancing

Pluralglancings

1. 1
   adjective

   Striking or touching something at a shallow angle, so the contact is light and partial rather than direct.

   Like a stray dart that nicks the edge of the board instead of sticking in the center.

   The bullet left only a glancing wound along his upper arm.

   A glancing blow from the car sent the cyclist sprawling rather than crushing him.

   Similaroblique, indirect, slanting

   Oppositedirect, head-on

   Note

   Its natural home is the phrase glancing blow: a hit that lands at an angle and slides off instead of driving straight in. The adjective grows from the verb's oblique sense, to send something moving aside, so the image is deflection rather than weakness. It can also be graded (a more glancing hit), because an angle can always be shallower or steeper.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of glance.

   Glancing nervously at the door, she lowered her voice to a whisper.

   The driver was glancing at his phone when the light turned green.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of the verb, not only the look. Glancing at the door is the familiar use, but a mirror can be glancing light across a room, and a batsman glancing the ball turns it aside with an angled bat. As a gerund it names the act itself (glancing is not reading). With be it builds progressives: was glancing at his phone.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A look directed to one side; a brief, sideways turn of the eyes.

   Like the brief flick of the eyes you give a passerby on the street.

   A single glancing at the rear mirror told her she was being followed.

   He gave the document no more than a glancing before signing it.

   Similarlook, glimpse, peek

   Note

   A countable noun, unlike the gerund of the verb, and so it can take a plural. David Brown, in Christ's Second Coming (1856), writes of "comprehensive glancings at" future eras of prophecy, meaning passing allusions rather than turns of the eye. For a single look, glance is the ordinary word, and glancing used as a noun stands out.

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