blaze

blaze n flare, flame, glare, glow (see under BLAZE vb)

Analogous words: firing or fire, kindling, igniting or ignition (see corresponding verbs at LIGHT): effulgence, refulgence, radiance, brilliance or brilliancy (see corresponding adjectives at BRIGHT)

blaze vb Blaze, flame, flare, glare, glow are comparable both as verbs meaning to burn or appear to burn brightly and as nouns denoting a brightly burning light or fire.

Blaze implies great activity in burning, the thorough kindling of the burning substance or material, and the radiation of intense light and often heat

{

the sun blazed down upon them with a crushing violence— Forester

}

{

everyone fought fire. Everyone went to the woods and thrashed out some new blaze— Vorse

}

{

her eyes blazing in her white face— Stevenson

}

Flame suggests a darting tongue or tongues of fire formed by rapidly burning gas or vapor; it therefore often connotes less steadiness than blaze and sometimes less intense heat and light

{

the burning house was soon a mass of flames

}

{

the torches flamed in the wind

}

{

the dry fuel soon burst into flame

}

{

dimmed hope's newly kin-dled flame— Shelley

}

Flare implies flame, especially a flame darting up suddenly against a dark background or from a dying fire

{

torches that guttered and flared— Hewlett

}

{

he . . . lighted a cigarette and then remembered that the flare of the match could probably be seen from the station— Anderson

}

Glare (see also GAZE) emphasizes the steady emission or reflection of bright light; it sometimes connotes an almost unendurable brilliancy

{

dazed by the lantern glare— Kipling

}

{

the snow glares in the sunlight

}

{

the glare of a forest fire in the sky

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{

he . . . lets the fire glare on the sullen face for a moment, and it sears itself into the memory forever—J. R. Lowell

}

{

his days were passed in the glare of publicity— Buchan

}

Glow also stresses the emission of light, but it suggests an absence of flame and therefore connotes steadiness, intensity, radiance without brilliance, and often warmth and duration

{

the glow of coals

}

{

her fine effect of glowing from within as a lamp glows— Mary Austin

}

{

the fire that burned within him, that glowed with so strange and marvelous a radiance in almost all he wrote— Huxley

}

Analogous words: *illuminate, illumine, light: *burn: *flash, gleam, glance