• IPA: /ɡlɪmps/

glimpse (plural glimpses)

1. A brief look, glance, or peek.

   I only got a glimpse of the car, so I can tell you the colour but not the registration number.

   • Here hid by shrub wood, there by glimpses seen.

   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 24962326 ↗:

     Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

2. A sudden flash.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 6”, 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 ↗:

     Light as the lightning glimpse they ran.

3. A faint idea; an inkling.

• French: aperçu
• Italian: occhiata
• Portuguese: olhadela
• Russian: бе́глый взгляд

• Portuguese: relance
• Spanish: atisbo

glimpse (glimpses, present participle glimpsing; past and past participle glimpsed)

1. (transitive) To see or view briefly or incompletely.

   I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.

2. (intransitive) To appear by glimpses.

• perceive, notice, detect, espy, spot, catch sight of

• French: entrevoir
• Italian: intravedere
• Portuguese: vislumbrar
• Russian: уви́деть ме́льком
• Spanish: entrever, atisbar, vislumbrar, ojear