gliff

• glift

Compare Middle English glyffen (“to give a glancing look; to become startled or frightened”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡlɪf/
• Rhymes: -ɪf
• Homophone: glyph

gliff (plural gliffs)

1. (Scotland, archaic) A quick glance.
2. (Scotland, archaic) An unexpected view of something startling.
3. (Scotland, archaic) A sudden fright.
4. (Scotland, archaic) A short moment.
   • 1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter IX, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume I (The Black Dwarf), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]; London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 207:

     [W]ill ye come out and speak just a gliff to ane that has mony thanks to gi'e ye?— […] Wad ye but come out a gliff, man, or but say ye're listening?— […]

• giffle (East Anglia)

gliff (third-person singular simple present gliffs, present participle gliffing, simple past and past participle gliffed)

1. (archaic, Scotland, transitive) To glimpse.

• “gliff”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

gliff

1. soft mutation of cliff