Glaring

A glare is a facial expression showing disapproval, fierceness and/or hostility. In some cultures, glaring is considered offensive. A glare may be induced by anger or frustration.

A man glaring at something off-screen

Visually, a glaring person tends to have their eyes fixed and heavily focused on a subject. This can sometimes be considered synonymous to staring but, in most cases, staring is caused due to curiosity and lasts only for a short duration, whereas glaring is caused due to contempt and lasts for a relatively longer duration.

Uses and examples

Many people glare at a subject to express disapproval of the physical nature of the subject or ideas that may be expressed by the subject.

Glaring is often used as a simile, like: "Glaring like mad (Aristophanes), Glaring like two gaunt wolves with a famished brood (Mathilde Blind) ... [or] Glaring like a Lion in a cage (O. Henry)."^[1] Glaring can be a metaphor, as used in Western esotericism terms, and is Hexagram 52.^[2] "Glaring" is used in legal cases to mean blatant, obvious, "threatening", "dangerous", or knowingly,^[3] or together in arguments as "glaring and shocking".^[4]

Possibly the most common clichés for the past century using glare are "glaring falsehood" and "glaring absurdity",^[5] and "glaring and shocking."^[4]

See also

• Frown
• Myasthenia gravis
• Sneer