• IPA: /ɡeɪz/

gaze (gazes, present participle gazing; 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 [https://web.archive.org/web/20111118112503/http://www.italian.ucla.edu/people/faculty/harrison/Essays/Antonioni.htm 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, “Book 7”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

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

• gape, stare, look

• French: fixer
• German: anstarren
• Italian: fissare
• Portuguese: contemplar
• Russian: разгля́дывать
• Spanish: observar

• Italian: guardare, puntare gli occhi, volgere lo sguardo
• Portuguese: contemplar
• Russian: вглядываться в

gaze (plural gazes)

1. A fixed look; a look of eagerness, wonder, or admiration; a continued look of attention.
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314 ↗, page 16 ↗:

     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.
   • 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: Printed by J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], OCLC 228732398 ↗, page 11 ↗:

     Made of my Enemies the ſcorn and gaze;

3. (psychoanalysis) 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.

• Italian: occhiata
• Russian: при́стальный взгля́д