gaze

gaze vb Gaze, gape, stare, glare, peer, gloat are comparable when meaning to look at long and attentively, but they vary greatly in their implications of attitude and motive.

Gaze implies fixed and prolonged attention (as in admiration, curiosity, or wonder)

{

and still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew— Goldsmith

}

{

the black-marble Egyptian gazing with unwavering eyes into the sky— Shaw

}

Gape adds to gaze the implication of stupid and openmouthed woncler or indecision

{

a yokel gaping at the sights on his first visit to the city

}

{

the Gurkhas . . . hitched their kukris well to hand, and gaped expectantly at their officers— Kipling

}

{

depicts man lost and blindly gaping amidst the chaos— Gwyn

}

Stare implies a fixed and direct gazing at a person or object; it may connote curiosity, astonishment, insolence, or vacant fixedness

{

or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific—and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise-silent, upon a peak in Darien— Keats

}

{

staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked— George Eliot

}

{

she tried not to stare at Mr. Scales, but her gaze would not leave him— Bennett

}

Glare adds to stare the implication of fierceness or anger

{

all . . . with countenance grim glared on him passing— Milton

}

{

neither Clem nor Lonnie replied. Arch glared at them for not answering— Caldwell

}

Peer suggests a looking narrowly, especially with or as if with partly closed eyes, or curiously, especially through or from behind something

{

Mrs. Cary kept peering uneasily out of the window at her husband—M. E. Freeman

}

{

his pale, nearsighted eyes had always the look of peering into distance— Cather

}

Gloat usually implies prolonged or frequent gazing upon something, especially in secret, often with profound, usually malignant or unhallowed, satisfaction

{

a miser gloating over his hoard

}

{

to gaze and gloat with his hungry eye on jewels that gleamed like a glowworm's spark— Longfellow

}

Sometimes the implication of malignant satisfaction is so emphasized that the implication of gazing is obscured or lost

{

in vengeance gloating on another's pain— Byron

}

Analogous words: watch, look, *see: observe, survey, contemplate (see SEE): regard, admire (see under REGARD n)