gleam

/ɡlim/noun, verb

gleam is spelled G-L-E-A-M. The wrong spelling people search most is gleem: about 320 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Gleam is a noun meaning “An appearance of light, especially one which is indistinct or small, or short-lived”. The plural of gleam is gleams.

How do you spell gleam?

Gleam is spelled G-L-E-A-M. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for gleam in either form.

gleamthe right spelling1,880 searches a month

gleeme in place of a320 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

What does gleam mean?

noun

1
An appearance of light, especially one which is indistinct or small, or short-lived.
2
An indistinct sign of something; a glimpse or hint.
The rescue workers preserved a gleam of optimism that the trapped miners might still survive.
3
A bright, but intermittent or short-lived, appearance of something.
4
A look of joy or liveliness on one's face.
5
obsoleteSometimes as hot gleam: a warm ray of sunlight; also, a period of warm weather, for instance, between showers of rain.
6
obsoleteBrightness or shininess; radiance, splendour.

verb

1
Chiefly in conjunction with an adverb: to cause (light) to shine.
2
To shine, especially in an indistinct or intermittent manner; to glisten, to glitter.
3
To be strongly but briefly apparent.
4
obsoleteOf a hawk or other bird of prey: to disgorge filth from its crop or gorge.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce gleam?

UK /ɡliːm/
US /ɡlim/

Gleam has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-gleam.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of gleam

gleams plural, present, singular, he/she/it
gleaming participle, present
gleamed participle, past, singular, he/she/it, plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is gleam?

Gleam appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 30,017th most frequent word form in the list.

gleam0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Gleam in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
French	miroitement, rayon, reflet (indistinct or small, or short-lived, appearance…), luire (to shine, especially in an indistinct or…)
German	Schein, Schimmer (indistinct or small, or short-lived, appearance…), schimmern (to shine, especially in an indistinct or…), Funke (indistinct sign of something – see also…), aufblitzen (to be strongly but briefly apparent)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does gleam come from?

From Middle English glem, gleam, gleme (“shaft of light; part of a comet’s tail; reflected sparkle; dawn; daylight; radiance (physical or spiritual); something fleeting”), from Old English glǣm (“gleam”), from Proto-Germanic *glaimiz (“brightness; splendour”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to shine”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).