• Gaze

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /É¡eɪz/
    • Rhymes: -eɪz
    • Homophones: gays

    Origin

    Akin to Swedish dial. gasa and Gothic 𐌿𐍃𐌲𐌰𐍃𐌾𐌰𐌽 (usgasjan, "to terrify").

    Gaze in Webster's Dictionary

    Full definition of gaze

    Verb

    1. (intransitive) To stare intently or earnestly.
      • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses (novel) Chapter 13Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.
    2. In fact, for Antonioni this gazing is probably the most fundamental of all cognitive activities ... (from Thinking in the Absence of Image)
      • Bible, Acts i. 11Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?
    3. (transitive, poetic) To stare at.
      • 1667: Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd,
        And gaz'd a while the ample Skie — John Milton, Paradise Lost (book VIII)

    Synonyms

    Troponyms

    • (to stare intently) ogle

    Derived terms

    Noun

    gaze

    (plural gazes)
    1. A fixed look; a look of eagerness, wonder, or admiration; a continued look of attention.
      • 1910, Emerson Hough, The Purchase Price Chapter 1, Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile ; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.
    2. (archaic) The object gazed on.
      • John Milton (1608-1674)made of my enemies the scorn and gaze
    3. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the relationship of the subject with the desire to look and awareness that one can be viewed.
      • 2003, Amelia Jones, The feminism and visual culture reader (page 35)She counters the tendency to focus on critical strategies of resisting the male gaze, raising the issue of the female spectator.

    Derived terms

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