Talk:glower

RFV discussion: March 2018

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glower

Requesting verification that the senses of etymology 1 (verb and noun) have been in use since "the late 15th century". DTLHS (talk) 18:34, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

It might be a tad older. The Middle English Dictionary (MED) has citations going back to the 1400s (and back to the 1300s with a different sense), including a circa-1450 "With blody eyne he gloryd" (which references gloss as "glowered") and an ante-1509 "He gan to moorne, and heeld hym stylle; He glouryd, and gan to syke." (As can be seen from entries with defdates as far back as the 8th century, defdates seem to be based on how old the word/sense is, not on how old a particular spelling is, but the spelling is also old; the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) has citations of the verb glowr from 1789 and 1796 (glour from 1766 and 1796), and of the noun glowr from 1785, 1789 and 1790.) Dictionary.com, apparently not distinguishing the two senses the MED has (only one of which is in our entry), dates the term to "1350-1400", Merriam-Webster (with only the sense we have) dates it to the 15th century. Incidentally, the EDD seems to be right in thinking this can also mean "to lour" like overcast weather does. - -sche (discuss) 19:11, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

In that case using {{defdate|from late 15th c.}} is misleading since the spelling "glower" is much more modern. DTLHS (talk) 19:17, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Just wanted to point out that that's what Oxford Dictionaries Online said. — SGconlaw (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it's any more confusing than defdates in general. As far as I have seen, defdates indicate how old the sense/definition is (hence "defdate"), not how old the spelling is, and this seems sensible to me (since they're sense-specific). (Like I said, other entries have defdates of e.g. "8th century", due to initial attestations of the word-sense in even more Old-English spellings.) - -sche (discuss) 21:09, 2 March 2018 (UTC)