Hi
Does "to give a gloss on"simply mean to explain or does it have other meaning? I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
It now means a summarised and generalised explanation of a complex subject. Sufficient for the reader who may be unfamiliar with the subject to follow the writer’s work, but without pretending to be an in depth treatment. It was also use din the past to mean a biased explanation given without any reference to the fact that it was contentious.
I’ve always seen it in the phrase “is glossed as” meaning a brief explanatory note or translation of a technical phrase
Gloss means a summary as in Glossary. IIRC it became a buzz word in business and academia about 1985.
It also refers to what we all do with academic books- writing in the margins- notes of our own.
It sounds a little dated now when you hear it used in presentations.
Interesting. The usage vis-a-vis mathematical writing is somewhat different. It is used to mean taking someone else’s results and pushing them further, usually (if not always) a simple extension of the original.
I’d read it as “polishing up existing work” - putting a (shiny) gloss on it.
The explanations stemming from “glossary” seem to be tech-folk etymology.
Is there an etymological connection between glossy meaning shiny and glossary?
On the contrary, you have been seduced by your own folk-etymological invention into an outright misunderstanding of the meaning.
Cite away, preferably from non-wiki and wikidic sources.
“Gloss” means “tongue” in Greek, thus such things as “glossolalia” (speaking in tongues) and “glossary”, which gives meanings for words (tongue as in language). So “give a gloss on” means to explain.
“Glossy” comes from a Germanic word meaning “shine”. Compare German Glosen or Swedish glysa.
Well, everybody else’s posts in this thread (apart from Hari Seldon’s maybe), and will the Online Etymology Dictionary do you?
Of course, you are not the first to be confused by the two senses of “gloss”, and, no doubt, as the dictionary implies, this confusion has somewhat influenced the way that the verb use, in particular, has been understood (perhaps particularly by mathematicians, given Hari’s testimony). Nevertheless, “gloss” in the sense of shiny or make shiny is a quite distinct word, with an origin quite distinct, from “gloss” in the sense the OP is asking about, meaning a brief explanation or to briefly explain (or give a brief, perhaps biased, interpretation). The first is of Germanic/Scandinavian origin, the second from Latin.
Accepted. (And thanks, too, njtt). I’m not often tripped up by etymology but this one got me.
I think modern usage has combined the terms somewhat so that both senses of “gloss” apply to many examples - the speaker is relying on the gloss-word meaning but implying the gloss-shine meaning as well.
Yes Amateur Barbarian, your definition is exactly as I have understood the phrase. Thanks.
davidmich
I don’t argue the etymology but my understanding of ‘putting a gloss on something’, would be to polish it up - make it look better than it really was. The more modern equivalent would be to ‘sex something up’.