blench

blench

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /blɛnt͡ʃ/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛntʃ

Etymology 1

From Middle English blench and blenchen, from Old English blenċan (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-Germanic *blankijaną (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ-. Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).[1].

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

1. (intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
   • a. 1870, William Cullen Bryant, The Battle-Field

     Blench not at thy chosen lot.

   • 1820, Francis Jeffrey, "Life of Curran", in The Edinburgh Review May 1820

     This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfilment.

   • 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King:

     Suddenly the great beast beat its hideous wings. […] Again it leaped into the air, and then swiftly fell down upon Éowyn, shrieking, striking with beak and claw. Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings […]

   • 1964 July, “The mythology of monorails”, in Modern Railways, page 57:

     Even a case-hardened monorailist must blench at the thought of the storm such a proposition would create.

   • 1998, Andrew Hurley (translator), Jorge Louis Borges, "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrnth", Collected Fictions, Penguin Putnam, p.255

     "This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."

2. (intransitive, of the eye) To quail.
3. (transitive) To deceive; cheat.
4. (transitive) To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
   • 2012, Jan 13, Polly Toynbee, "Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks", The Guardian

     Yesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench.

5. (transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
6. (intransitive) To fly off; to turn aside.
   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act IV, scene v]:

     Though sometimes you do blench from this to that.

Noun

blench (plural blenches)

1. A deceit; a trick.
2. A sidelong glance.
   • 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 110”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, OCLC 216596634:

     These blenches gave my heart another youth.

Descendants

• blanch (avoid)

Etymology 2

From Old French blanchir (“to bleach”).

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

1. (obsolete) To blanch.
   • 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 284:

     The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.

Related terms

• blench holding
• unblenching

References

1. blench in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

---

Middle English

Noun

blench

1. A deceit; a trick.
   • c. 1210, MS. Cotton Caligula A IX f.246.

     Feir weder turneð ofte into reine;
     An wunderliche hit makeð his blench.

     (please add an English translation of this usage example)