blench

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /blɛnt͡ʃ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (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”).

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 January 13, Polly Toynbee, “Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks”, in 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, [Act IV, scene v]:

     Though sometimes you do blench from this to that.

Derived terms

• blencher
• unblenched
• unblenching

 

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:

     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

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)