Blench
Origin 1
From Middle English blenchen, from Old English blencan ("to deceive, cheat"), from Proto-Germanic *blankijanÄ… ("to deceive"), from Proto-Indo-European *bhleg- ("to burn, shine, scorch"). Cognate with Icelandic blekkja ("to deceive, cheat, impose upon").
Webster 1913|blench
Full definition of blench
Verb
- (intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
- BryantBlench not at thy chosen lot.
- JeffreyThis painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfillment.
- 1998, Andrew Hurley (translator), Jorge Louis Borges, "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrnth", Collected Fictions, Penguin Putnam, p.255"This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."
- (intransitive) (of the eye) To quail.
- (transitive) To deceive; cheat.
- (transitive) To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
- 2012, Jan 13, Polly Toynbee, Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks, The GuardianYesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench.
- (transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
- (intransitive) To fly off; to turn aside.
- ShakespeareThough sometimes you do blench from this to that.
Noun
blench
(plural blenches)Origin 2
From Old French blanchir ("to bleach").
Verb
- (obsolete) To blanch.
- 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Harper Perennial (2005), p.283The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.