From Middle English blench (noun) and blenchen (verb), from Old English blenċan (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-West Germanic *blankijan, from Proto-Germanic *blankijaną (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ-. Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).
Meanings
A deceit; a trick.
A sidelong glance.
These blenches gave my heart another youth. 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:
From Middle English blench (noun) and blenchen (verb), from Old English blenċan (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-West Germanic *blankijan, from Proto-Germanic *blankijaną (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ-. Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).
Meanings
(intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfilment. 1820, Francis Jeffrey, “Life of Curran”, in The Edinburgh Review May 1820:
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 […] 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King:
Even a case-hardened monorailist must blench at the thought of the storm such a proposition would create. 1964 July, “The mythology of monorails”, in Modern Railways, page 57:
"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." 1998, Andrew Hurley (translator), Jorge Louis Borges, "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth", Collected Fictions, Penguin Putnam, p.255
Blench not at thy chosen lot. a. 1870, William Cullen Bryant, The Battle-Field:
(intransitive, of the eye) To quail.
(transitive) To deceive; cheat.
(transitive) To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
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. 2012 January 13, Polly Toynbee, “Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks”, in The Guardian:
(transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
(intransitive) To fly off; to turn aside.
Though sometimes you do blench from this to that. 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]:
Variant of blanch, from Middle English blanchen, blaunchen, from Old French blanchir (“to whiten, bleach”), from blanc (“white”), of Germanic origin; compare Middle English blenchen (“to turn pale", also "to flinch; deceive”), from Old English blenċan. More at blank.
Meanings
(obsolete) To blanch.
The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds. 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 284: