blench

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English blenchen, from Old English blencan (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-Germanic *blankijanan (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *bhleg- (“to burn, shine, scorch”). Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

1. (intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
   • 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."

2. (intransitive) (of the eye) To quail.
3. (transitive) To deceive; cheat.
4. (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 Guardian

     Yesterday 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.

5. (transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.

Noun

blench (plural blenches)

1. A deceit; a trick.
   • c. 1210, MS. Cotton Caligula A IX f.246.

     Feir weder turnedh ofte into reine; / An wunderliche hit makedh his blench.

2. A sidelong glance.
   • Shakespeare

     These blenches gave my heart another youth.

Etymology 2

From Old French blanchir (“to bleach”).

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

1. (obsolete) To blanch This word needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text {{rfdef}}..
   • 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Harper Perennial (2005), p.283

     The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.

Related terms

• unblenching

References