glimpses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of glimpse.

   The documentary offers fleeting glimpses of life behind the palace walls.

   Passengers caught their first glimpses of the coastline as the plane descended.

   Note

   The plural keeps the noun's habit of taking of: glimpses of the coast, glimpses of a private life. It also carries the figurative side of the word, where the look becomes an inkling, as in glimpses of an answer or glimpses of what might come. The older meaning, a brief flash of light, is archaic now. The same spelling serves the present-tense verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of glimpse.

   From the summit, a climber occasionally glimpses the valley through breaks in the cloud.

   The driver glimpses a deer at the edge of the road and slows down.

   Note

   Most often it takes a direct object: she glimpses a deer, he glimpses the truth. The second is the figurative use, for things that cannot literally be seen. Without an object it is usually followed by at or upon and means much the same as glances, as in he glimpses at the clock. A separate intransitive use means to glimmer, describing a faint, unsteady light.

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