Noun

blaze (plural blazes)Category:English lemmas#BLAZECategory:English nouns#BLAZECategory:English countable nouns#BLAZECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#BLAZECategory:Pages with entries#BLAZECategory:Pages with 5 entries#BLAZE

1. A fire, especially a fast-burning fire producing a lot of flames and light.
   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter III, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     Long after his cigar burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze. When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals, […].

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

2. Intense, direct light accompanied with heat.

   They sought shelter from the blaze of the sun.Category:English terms with usage examples#BLAZE

   • 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 13:

     O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse / Without all hope of day!

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

3. A high-visibility orange colour, typically used in warning signs and hunters' clothing.

   blaze:  

   Synonyms: safety orange, international orange

4. A bursting out, or active display of any quality.

   Synonym: outburst

   • c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene v]:

     his blaze of wrath

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

   • 1671, John Milton, “The Fourth Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 3:

     For what is glory but the blaze of fame?

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

5. (pokerCategory:en:Poker#BLAZE) A hand consisting of five face cards.

Verb

blaze (third-person singular simple present blazes, present participle blazing, simple past and past participle blazed)Category:English lemmas#BLAZECategory:English verbs#BLAZECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#BLAZECategory:Pages with entries#BLAZECategory:Pages with 5 entries#BLAZE

1. (intransitiveCategory:English intransitive verbs#BLAZE) To be on fire, especially producing bright flames.

   The campfire blazed merrily.Category:English terms with usage examples#BLAZE

2. (intransitiveCategory:English intransitive verbs#BLAZE) To send forth or reflect a bright light; shine like a flame.
   • 1793, William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches:

     And far and wide the icy summit blaze.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path […]. It twisted and turned, […] and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

3. (intransitiveCategory:English intransitive verbs#BLAZE, poeticCategory:English poetic terms#BLAZE) To be conspicuous; shine brightly a brilliancy (of talents, deeds, etc.).
4. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE, rareCategory:English terms with rare senses#BLAZE) To set in a blaze; burn.
5. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To cause to shine forth; exhibit vividly; be resplendent with.
6. (figurative) To be furiously angry; to speak or write in a rage.
   • 1929, Reginald Charles Barker, The Hair-trigger Brand, page 160:

     “I’ll die before I let my grandad pay you that much money!” blazed the girl.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
7. (slangCategory:English slang#BLAZE) To smoke marijuana.
   • 2005, “We Major”, in Late Registration, performed by Kanye West ft. Really Doe and Nas:

     I take a hit of that chronic, it got me stuck / But really what’s amazing is how I keep blazing

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

   • 2015, Jme, “Pulse 8” (track 1), in Integrity>, performed by Jme:

     Fam, I don’t blaze / But I can bill up, so if I get bored / I might mm, bill it / At studio, I’m like mm, kill it

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

Noun

blaze (plural blazes)Category:English lemmas#BLAZECategory:English nouns#BLAZECategory:English countable nouns#BLAZECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#BLAZECategory:Pages with entries#BLAZECategory:Pages with 5 entries#BLAZE

1. The white or lighter-coloured markings on a horse's face.

   The palomino had a white blaze on its face.Category:English terms with usage examples#BLAZE

2. A spot made on trees by chipping off a piece of the bark, usually as a surveyor's mark.
   • 1855, Baynard Rush Hall, The New Purchase: Or, Early Years in the Far West - Page 71‎:

     The blaze is a longitudinal cut on trees at convenient intervals, made by cutting off the bark with an axe or hatchet: three blazes in a perpendicular line on the same tree indicating a legislative road, the single blaze, a settlement or neighbourhood road.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

4. (hiking) A waymark: any marking as painted on trees, carvings, affixed markers, posts, flagging, or crosses placed to lead hikers on their trail.

Verb

blaze (third-person singular simple present blazes, present participle blazing, simple past and past participle blazed)Category:English lemmas#BLAZECategory:English verbs#BLAZECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#BLAZECategory:Pages with entries#BLAZECategory:Pages with 5 entries#BLAZE

1. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE, only in the past participle) To mark with a white spot on the face (as a horse).
2. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To set a mark on (as a tree, usually by cutting off a piece of its bark).
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 105:

     They had, just as we expected they would, cut Stuart’s tracks, and had actually slept one night in one of his old camping-places, finding the trees “blazed” and marked “S.,” as were all the trees at intervals along his line of exploration.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     We drew them up, therefore, and concealed them among the bushes, blazing a tree with our axes, so that we should find them again.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

3. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To indicate or mark out (a trail, especially through vegetation) by a series of blazes.

   The guide blazed his way through the undergrowth.Category:English terms with usage examples#BLAZE

4. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To mark off or stake a claim to land.

   He blazed his claim on the land.Category:English terms with usage examples#BLAZE

5. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE, figurative) To set a precedent for the taking-on of a challenge; lead by example.

   Darwin blazed a path for the rest of us.Category:English terms with usage examples#BLAZE

Verb

blaze (third-person singular simple present blazes, present participle blazing, simple past and past participle blazed)Category:English lemmas#BLAZECategory:English verbs#BLAZECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#BLAZECategory:Pages with entries#BLAZECategory:Pages with 5 entries#BLAZE

1. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To blow, as from a trumpet.
2. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To publish; announce publicly.
3. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE) To disclose; bewray; defame.

   Synonyms: besmirch, denigrate, traduce; see also Thesaurus:defame

4. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#BLAZE, heraldryCategory:en:Heraldry#BLAZE) To blazon.
   • 1576, Gerard LEGH, The Accedens of Armory. With an address to the Reader by R. Argoll. Woodcuts. MS. notes, page 28:

     And nowe here is another crosse for your learning, and is thus blazed. The field is Argét, a playn crosse Gules, voyded of the first.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

   • 1597, John Bossewell, Works of Armorie: devided into 3 Bookes, intituled the Concordes of Armorie, the Armorie of Honor and of lotes and creastes, page 28:

     [...] yée thal blaze his Armes thus. A. beareth Argent, and Sable parted per Pale.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

   • 1877, Henry Sydney Grazebrook, Collections for a genealogy of the noble families of Henzey, Tyttery, and Tyzack, page 26:

     Beinge thus blazed: Henzell On a ffeild Gules, beareth Three Acornes Slipped Or; Two and One.

     Category:English terms with quotations#BLAZE

Noun

blaze (plural blazes)Category:English lemmas#BLAZECategory:English nouns#BLAZECategory:English countable nouns#BLAZECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#BLAZECategory:Pages with entries#BLAZECategory:Pages with 5 entries#BLAZE

1. Publication; the act of spreading widely by report.

Related terms

Related terms

Inflection

Further reading

• “blaze (I)”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011