gaze

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a long fixed look

   They fixed their gaze on the horizon.

2. 2
   verb

   To stare intently or earnestly.

   They gazed at the stars for hours.

3. 3
   verb

   To stare at.

   Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd, / And gaz'd a while the ample Skie

4. 4
   noun

   A fixed look; a look of eagerness, wonder, or admiration; a continued look of attention.

   Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.

5. 5
   noun

   The object gazed on.

   Those howers that with gentle worke did frame / The louely gaze where euery eye doth dwell.

6. 6
   noun

   In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the relationship of the subject with the desire to look and awareness that one can be viewed.

   She counters the tendency to focus on critical strategies of resisting the male gaze, raising the issue of the female spectator.

7. 7
   noun

   The framework in which a subject is presented, determined by the biases of the creator and/or audience.

   hooks is right to argue that within this culture the ethnographic conceit of a neutral gaze will always be a white gaze, an unmarked white gaze, one which passes its own perspective off as the omniscient

8. 8
   verb

   look at with fixed eyes

Etymology

From Middle English gasen; akin to Swedish dialectal gasa and Gothic 𐌿𐍃𐌲𐌰𐌹𐍃𐌾𐌰𐌽 (usgaisjan, “to terrify”).