glory

From Middle English glory, glorie, from Old French glorie (“glory”), from Latin glōria (“glory, fame, renown, praise, ambition, boasting”). Doublet of gloria. Displaced native Old English wuldor.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɡlɔː.ɹi/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɡlɔɹ.i/, [ˈɡloɹ.i]

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• (without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /ˈɡlo(ː)ɹi/
• Rhymes: -ɔːɹi

glory (countable and uncountable, plural glories)

1. Great beauty and splendor.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […] , the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.

   • 2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891:

     One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.

2. Honour, admiration, or distinction, accorded by common consent to a person or thing; high reputation; renown.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 197:

     In this faire wize they traueild long yfere,
     Through many hard assayes, which did betide;
     Of which he honour still away did beare,
     And spred his glorie through all countries wide.

3. That quality in a person or thing which secures general praise or honour.
   • c. 1580 (date written), Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “[The First Booke] The First Eclogues”, in Fulke Greville, Matthew Gwinne, and John Florio, editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590, →OCLC; republished in Albert Feuillerat, editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Cambridge English Classics: The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; I), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1912, →OCLC, page 136:

     Deeme it no gloire to swell in tyrannie.

   • c. 1607–1608, William Shakeſpeare, The Late, And much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: Imprinted at London for Henry Goſſon,  […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act II, scene 2]:

     As jewels lose their glory if neglected,
     So princes their renowns if not respected.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.

4. Worship or praise.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 2:14:

     Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

5. (meteorology, optics) An optical phenomenon, consisting of concentric rings and somewhat similar to a rainbow, caused by sunlight or moonlight interacting with the water droplets that compose mist or clouds, centered on the antisolar or antilunar point.

   Synonym: anticorona

6. Victory; success.
   • 2012 May 13, Alistair Magowan, “Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport‎:

     But, with United fans in celebratory mood as it appeared their team might snatch glory, they faced an anxious wait as City equalised in stoppage time.

7. An emanation of light supposed to shine from beings that are specially holy. It is represented in art by rays of gold, or the like, proceeding from the head or body, or by a disk, or a mere line.
   • 1854, Charles Dickens, chapter 13, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC:

     Seen across the dim candle with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head.

8. (theology) The manifestation of the presence of God as perceived by humans in Abrahamic religions.
9. (obsolete) Pride; boastfulness; arrogance.
   • c. 1624, “A Hymne to Venus”, in George Chapman, transl., The Crowne of all Homers Workes Batrachomyomachia or the Battaile of Frogs and Mise, His Hymn’s and Epigrams‎, London: John Bill, page 106:

     […] But if thou declare
     The Secrets, truth; and art so mad to dare
     (In glory of thy fortunes) to approue,
     That rich-crownd Venus, mixt with thee in loue;
     Ioue (fir’d with my aspersion, so dispred)
     Will, with a wreakefull lightning, dart thee dead.

10. Something glorious.
    • 1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle:

      It was a woman’s clothing, beyond a doubt, […] The two men gazed at the heap of feminine glories, — it might have been the most wonderful sight they ever had seen.

• (emanation of light proceeding from specially holy beings): halo
• praise
• worship
• fame
• honor
• honour

glory (third-person singular simple present glories, present participle glorying, simple past and past participle gloried)

1. To exult with joy; to rejoice.
   • 1753, James Hervey, A Visitation Sermon: Preached at Northampton, May 10, 1753:

     In what the Apostle did glory?—He gloried in a Cross. ... [T]o the Ear of a Galatian, it conveyed much the same Meaning, as if the Apostle had gloried in a Halter; gloried in the Gallows; gloried in a Gibbet.

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles:

     He says he glories in what happened, and that good may be done indirectly; but I wish he would not so wear himself out now he is getting old, and would leave such pigs to their wallowing.

   • 1902, William James, “Lectures 4 & 5”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience […] ‎, London: Longmans, Green & Co.:

     When the passion is extreme, suffering may actually be gloried in, provided it be for the ideal cause, death may lose its sting, the grave its victory.

2. To boast; to be proud.
   • 1881, Revised Version, 2 Corinthians 7:14:

     For if in anything I have gloried to him on your behalf, I was not put to shame; but as we spake all things to you in truth, so our glorying also, which I made before Titus, was found to be truth.

3. (archaic, poetic) To shine radiantly.
   • 1859–85, Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King, "The Last Tournament":

     Down in a casement sat,

     A low sea-sunset glorying round her hair

     And glossy-throated grace, Isolt the Queen.

glory

1. Alternative form of glorie