glimpse

To see or view (someone, or something tangible) briefly and incompletely.transitive

• Morning!—the Vestal Mother of the Sun / Seem'st thou to be, since from thy bosom born, / (Thou that first glimpsest—like a white-stoled nun!—) / He springeth forth—Oh! thou triumphal Morn!— / His race of glory and of joy to run; […]
• Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race—as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed.

To perceive (something intangible) briefly and incompletely.figurativelytransitive

• I have only begun to glimpse the magnitude of the problem.

Chiefly followed by at or upon: to look at briefly and incompletely; to glance.intransitive

• The door always opens directly into the kitchen, without any vestibule; and, glimpsing in, you see that a cottager's life must be the very plainest and homeliest that ever was lived by men and women.

To shine with a faint, unsteady light; to glimmer, to shimmer.intransitive

• O Lothſome place where I / Haue ſene and herd my dere / When in my hart her eye / Hath made her thought appere / By glimſing with ſuch grace / As fortune it ne would, / That laſten any ſpace, / Betwene vs lenger ſhould.
• [O]ur curious yeares can finde / The chriſtal glas, vvhich glimſeth braue & bright, / And ſhevves the thing, much better than it is, / Beguylde vvith foyles, of ſundry ſubtil ſights, / So that they ſeeme, and couet not to be.

To appear or start to appear, especially faintly or unclearly; to dawn.archaicintransitivepoetic

• Straitvvaies on heapes the thronging cloudes ariſe, / As though the heauen vvere angry vvith the night, / Deformed ſhadovves, glimpſing in his ſight / As darkenes, for it vvould more darkened be, / Through thoſe poore crannies forcde it ſel

Sometimes followed by out: to provide a brief and incomplete look.intransitiverare

Chiefly followed by of: a brief and incomplete look.

• I only got a glimpse of the car, so I can tell you the colour but not the registration number.

A brief, sudden flash of light; a glimmer.archaic

• Sunk in his [Despair's] skull, his ſtaring eyes did glovve, / That made him deadly looke, their glimpſe did ſhovve / Like Cockatrices eyes, that ſparks of poyſon throvve.
• They that held the Stars of heaven vvere but rayes and flaſhing glimpſes of the Empyreall light, through holes and perforations of the upper heaven, took of the natural ſhadovvs of ſtars, […]

A faint or imprecise idea; an inkling.figuratively

• Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion.
• Let there be thistles, there are grapes; / If old things, there are new; / Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, / Yet glimpses of the true.

A brief, unspecified amount of time; a moment.figurativelyrare

• […] Alwin smiled, / When aught that from his young lips archly fell / The gloomy film from Harold's eye beguiled; / And pleased for a glimpse appeared the woeful Childe.

A faint (and often temporary) appearance; a tinge.obsolete

• Reuiued with a glimſe of grace old ſorowes to let fal, / The hidden ſtraines I know and ſecret ſnares of loue: / How ſoone a loke wil print a thought, that neuer may remoue.
• [T]here is no man hath a vertue, that he hath not a glimpſe of, nor any mã [man] an attaint, but he carries ſome ſtain of it.