Glean
[gliːn] or [ɡlin]
Definition
(v. t.) To gather after a reaper; to collect in scattered or fragmentary parcels, as the grain left by a reaper, or grapes left after the gathering.
(v. t.) To gather from (a field or vineyard) what is left.
(v. t.) To collect with patient and minute labor; to pick out; to obtain.
(v. i.) To gather stalks or ears of grain left by reapers.
(v. i.) To pick up or gather anything by degrees.
(n.) A collection made by gleaning.
(n.) Cleaning; afterbirth.
Edited by Dinah
Synonyms and Synonymous
v. a. [1]. Gather (after reapers).[2]. Collect, cull, pick up.
Editor: Paula
Definition
v.t. to gather in handfuls after the reapers: to collect (what is thinly scattered).—v.i. to gather the corn left by a reaper.—n. that which is gleaned: the act of gleaning.—ns. Glean′er; Glean′ing.
Typist: Norton
Examples
- He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist.
- It was an occupation in which he would be apt to glean much gossip and many stray scraps of information, but little that would tend to broaden his mind. Rupert S. Holland. Historic Inventions.
- The speckled fowls were so numerous that Mr. Brooke observed, Your farmers leave some barley for the women to glean, I see. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- Its evolution from the ancient harp, gleaned by man from the wind, that grand old harper, who smote his thunder harp of pines, is too long a story to here recite in detail. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
- A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native.
Typist: Maura