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Blench   Listen
verb
Blench  v. i.  (past & past part. blenched; pres. part. blenching)  
1.
To shrink; to start back; to draw back, from lack of courage or resolution; to flinch; to quail. "Blench not at thy chosen lot." "This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfillment."
2.
To fly off; to turn aside. (Obs.) "Though sometimes you do blench from this to that."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blench" Quotes from Famous Books



... shall go join his father. I give orders now to change him to the chamber above the chapel. If that ye can swear your innocency with a good solid oath and an assured countenance, it is well; the lad will be at peace a little, and I will spare him. If that ye stammer or blench, or anyways boggle at the swearing, he will not believe you; and, by the mass, he shall die. There is for your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... shall hold My evil, or roof it above? I cried for dancing of old, I cried in my heart for love: What dancing waiteth me now? What love that shall kiss my brow Nor blench at ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... for the prosecution of Verres. He was firm against all that Catiline attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for the responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of Catiline to death. In defending Milo, whether the cause were good or bad, he did not blench.[267] He joined the Republican army in Macedonia though he distrusted Pompey and his companions. When he thought that there was a hope for the Republic, he sprung at Antony with all the courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all had failed and was rotten ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... eyes were the only optics gazing, Upon a feat that's no doubt most amazing; The Thames' mouth occupied by a fine fleet! The sight—as the fleet's mine—of course is sweet, But there's one thought that rather makes me blench:— Supposing that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... and duty. Do you wish to have the respectable name of Straker dragged through the mud of a Spanish criminal court? The police will search me. They will find Louisa's portrait. It will be published in the illustrated papers. You blench. It will ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... bravos. At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from the shambles. Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those days—gone by now, thank God!—and whispered his name when they spoke of assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not blench before a Guise, nor blush before ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... Cadwalader. Gather this budding flower into your bosom, and then—Oh, he must love his child! Through her we have our hand on his heart. Make her suffer—she's but a country girl, and you have lived in Paris—make her suffer, and if, in doing so, you cause him to blench, then believe I am looking upon you from the grave I go to, and be happy; for you will not have lived, nor will I have died, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... again for ever. Oh! the lot of a lover is hard, at least if he has set all his heart on the cast, as I had done, and verily, as our Scots saw runs, "women are kittle cattle." It is a strange thing that one who has learned not to blench from a bare blade, or in bursting of cannon-balls and flight of arrows, should so easily be daunted where a weak girl is concerned; yet so it was in my case. I know not if I feared more than now when Brother Thomas had me in the still chamber, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... moment, a fourth name thrown out with an assured countenance? A ship is not to be trusted that sails under so many colours. This is not the simple bearing of innocence. No - the young master was already treading crooked paths; already, he would start and blench at a hand upon his shoulder, with the look we know so well in the face of Hogarth's Idle Apprentice; already, in the blue devils, he would see Henry Cousin, the executor of high justice, going in dolorous procession towards Montfaucon, and hear the wind and the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... place of watch, torches should be put to the room, then that halters should be made out of their robes; and to these they should proffer their throats to be strangled, thrusting away the support to the feet. They agreed, and that they might blench the less at death, she gave them a draught of wine. After this Hagbard was led to the hill, which afterwards took its name from him, to be hanged. Then, to test the loyalty of his true love, he told the executioners to hang ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... not blench, nor would he; being half French and of good blood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for a half century of war. He would not have blenched, even if he had not, from the sunlit view of God's earth and heaven ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... not blench even at this. Glaucon remained in the tent, translating and hearing all the details: how Hydarnes was to press the attack from the rear at early dawn, how Mardonius was to conduct another onset from the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... minute the mirth died out of his half closed eyes, and a scowl appeared upon his brow, as he fiercely gazed in the eyes that did not for a moment blench. But the frown died out in a look of ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... nerve thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot; The timid good may stand aloof, The sage ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... had he been hidden all these years? What was all this frenzy of rejoicing, this blare of trumpets, these ranks of grim men with weapons in their hands? The stunning truth fell on her; but, though she felt that all was lost, not a whit did she blench, but fronted them all as proudly as ever. One cannot but admire the dauntless woman, 'magnificent in sin.' But her cry of 'Treason! treason!' brought none to her side. As she stood solitary there, she must have felt that her day was over, and that nothing remained ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... everything is over, and it can never do any good." She gave a dry sob, and cast upon him a look of keen reproach, which he knew he deserved. "I was engaged to him once. Or," she added, as if she could not bear to see him blench, "he could think so. It was the year after ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... the same year. He had previously, in 1544, acquired the other half of Culteleod and Drynie from Magnus Mowat, and Patrick Mowat of Bugholly. In 1543 John Mackenzie acquired Kildins, part of Lochbroom, to himself and Elizabeth Grant, his wife, holding blench for a penny, and confirmed in the same year by Queen Mary. [MS. History by the Earl ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... exceptions are rare. For the most part men stick to their party and die as foolish as they were born—which is called consistency. Convinced sometimes against their will, they are of the same opinion still. Loyalty and obstinacy will look facts in the face and never blench, and every one remains truer to his social circle than to his private judgments. People's politics are their prejudices at a masked ball, and the Conservatives will vote Conservative and the Liberals Liberal, through a ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... the bay together, cast their lines, and talk a prodigious amount of heresy. She met him, as Verena met him, "in the environs," but in a different spirit. He was immensely amused at her attitude, and saw that nothing in the world could, as he expressed it, make her wink. She would never blench nor show surprise; she had an air of taking everything abnormal for granted; betrayed no consciousness of the oddity of Ransom's situation; said nothing to indicate she had noticed that Miss Chancellor ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... even then. She had not blenched since. And she never would blench. In spite of his gorgeous position and his unique reputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride in him, he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eye always told him that he was still the lad Denry, and her inferior in moral force. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... shall tell before you sleep!" Fred announced, sitting up. "Who feareth not God nor regardeth me will blench before the prospect of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... venomous; on the other the girl stood virtually alone—for the elder woman had fallen to weeping helplessly, and the attorney seemed to be unequal to this new combatant. Even so, and though her face betrayed trouble and some irresolution, she did not blench, but faced her accuser with a slowly rising passion ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... the express arrived, and as the lights flared up, Orlando entered the waiting-room of the station, with a lady on his arm, and presently showed at the platform doorway, smiling and cheerful. He did not blench when Mazarine came towards him. Mazarine had seen the flutter of a blue skirt in the waiting-room, and his wife had worn blue ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to blench ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat



Words linked to "Blench" :   pale, color, colour, discolour, discolor, blanch



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