gaze

Akin to Swedish dialectal gasa and Gothic 𐌿𐍃𐌲𐌰𐍃𐌾𐌰𐌽 (usgasjan, “to terrify”). [1]

• IPA^(key): /ɡeɪz/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪz
• Homophone: gays

gaze (third-person singular simple present gazes, present participle gazing, simple past and past participle gazed)

1. (intransitive) To stare intently or earnestly.
   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses Chapter 13

     Gerty 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.

   They gazed at the stars for hours.

   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. 11

     Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?

2. (transitive, poetic) To stare at.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost (book VIII)

     Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd, / And gaz'd a while the ample Skie

• gape, stare, look

• (to stare intently): ogle

• at gaze
• begaze
• foregaze
• gazer

gaze (plural gazes)

1. A fixed look; a look of eagerness, wonder, or admiration; a continued look of attention.
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0105:

     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.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     made of my enemies the scorn and gaze

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

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, p.35:

     She counters the tendency to focus on critical strategies of resisting the male gaze, raising the issue of the female spectator.

• foregaze

• IPA^(key): /ɡɑz/
• Homophones: gaz, gazes, gazent

Either from Arabic قَزّ‎ (qazz, “silk”), from Persian کز‎ (kaz, “silk”), from Middle Persian kaz (“silk”); or from غَزَّة‎ (ḡazza, “Gaza”), a city associated with silk production.

gaze f (plural gazes)

1. gauze

gaze

1. first-person singular present indicative of gazer
2. third-person singular present indicative of gazer
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of gazer
4. third-person singular present subjunctive of gazer
5. second-person singular imperative of gazer

• “gaze” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

gaze f (plural gazes)

1. gauze (thin fabric with open weave)
2. gauze (cotton fabric used as surgical dressing)