glean

Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to: navigation, search
See also gleam

Contents

English [edit]

Etymology 1 [edit]

From Middle English glenen, from Anglo-Norman glener, from Late Latin glen(n)ō (“make a collection”), from Gaulish.

Pronunciation [edit]

Verb [edit]

glean (third-person singular simple present gleans, present participle gleaning, simple past and past participle gleaned)

Before the apparition of modern agriculture, women often had to glean.
  1. To harvest grain left behind after the crop has been reaped.
  2. To gather information in small amounts, with implied difficulty, bit by bit.
  3. To frugally accumulate resources from low-yield contexts.
    He gleaned a living from newspaper work for a few months, but in the summer went to a fishing village […] where […] he wrote his great historical drama, "Master Olof." (Translators Edith and Warner Oland on author August Strindberg.)
Synonyms [edit]
  • (gather information): learn
Translations [edit]
harvest grain left behind after the crop has been reaped
gather information in small amounts, with implied difficulty, bit by bit
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

Noun [edit]

glean (plural gleans)

  1. A collection made by gleaning.
    • Dryden
      The gleans of yellow thyme distend his thighs.

Etymology 2 [edit]

Noun [edit]

glean

  1. (obsolete) cleaning; afterbirth
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Holland to this entry?)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Anagrams [edit]

Retrieved from "http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=glean&oldid=20580862"