What's the difference between gleam and twinkle?

Gleam


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To disgorge filth, as a hawk.
  • (n.) A shoot of light; a small stream of light; a beam; a ray; a glimpse.
  • (n.) Brightness; splendor.
  • (v. t.) To shoot, or dart, as rays of light; as, at the dawn, light gleams in the east.
  • (v. t.) To shine; to cast light; to glitter.
  • (v. t.) To shoot out (flashes of light, etc.).

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Archaeologists still argue about what it originally held, but visitors can now peer inside and see gleaming in the darkness a statue of Taharqa, loaned by Southampton museums.
  • (2) Every bit of her gleams with a sweet and shiny polish: which is probably a natural residue of her southern-belle charm, but is probably also partly attributable to the professional gloss the 20-year-old seems to have acquired with remarkable ease over her nascent two-year film career.
  • (3) Half a dozen bodyguards fan out from the trucks, and when they are in position, the Ace slowly climbs down from the driving seat of his gleaming landcruiser.
  • (4) Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our beautiful land,” Trump said in his speech before Congress last Tuesday as he renewed a campaign promise, vowing to ask Congress for a $1tn infrastructure investment package financed through public and private capital.
  • (5) In this she differs from both Jeremy Corbyn and the gleaming-eyed Brexiteers, who share a belief in a route-map to the promised land.
  • (6) Now Murray and his team-mates – whoever they may be in the final, although his brother, Jamie, is nailed on after reaching two major doubles finals this year – will stare more history in the face, a chance to lift the gleaming goblet for the first time since Fred Perry helped win it in 1936, the year he abandoned British tennis for a life among the professionals in America.
  • (7) Downing Street has refused to release the guest list for this year's bash at the private Hurlingham members' club in Fulham, west London, but the gleaming Rolls-Royces and Jaguars streaming through the gates gave a hint of the wealthy passengers heading inside.
  • (8) The eyes gleamed with fury, like the glimpse of flame you have on opening the air vent in a wood stove.
  • (9) Of course the polarisation of old and young rests on a fallacy, if not a downright lie: that all young people possess perfect skin and gleaming hair, have non-stop sex, are bursting with energy and are never lonely.
  • (10) Tsipras of Athens – a gripping drama entering its final act | Larry Elliott Read more Perhaps you have an image of Deutschland as being a nation of highly skilled, highly rewarded workers in gleaming factories.
  • (11) At one point, one knelt in front of the gleaming coffin topped with white roses.
  • (12) At the meeting Burragubba played the didgeridoo, a performance he repeated outside the bank’s gleaming glass and steel headquarters in the City.
  • (13) In the flesh, though, he's more Bruce Forsyth than Bruce Willis: sweet-eyed, gleaming-teethed, with a keen ear for innuendo and a frankly mucky chuckle.
  • (14) Speaking in Donetsk's Victoria hotel – a gleaming multistorey edifice next to the city's state-of-the-art Donbass football stadium – Taruta says he's confident presidential elections due on 25 May will take place.
  • (15) We put stuff in there that was not really that good, but fortunately there were a couple of gleaming things that everyone remembers while they've forgotten the dross."
  • (16) For mid-century Americans, these gleaming marketplaces provided an almost utopian alternative to the urban commercial district, an artificial downtown with less crime and fewer vermin.
  • (17) Photograph: Supplied by LMK Earlier this year, the Post – whose traffic numbers reached a record 83.1m unique visitors in September 2016, a 40% year-on-year increase – moved from its former base to a gleaming, light-filled building on K Street, where reporters sit cheek-by-jowl with software engineers.
  • (18) This sort of rabid protectionism might feel depressingly inevitable in the gleaming, super-efficient first world of tournaments such as Germany 2006.
  • (19) Behind 300 metres of gleaming chain-link fence, men in high-vis jackets paced and measured, while one man stood and watched.
  • (20) The oil boom has led to an influx of luxury brands and gleaming Rolls Royce showrooms and upmarket shopping malls studded with Gucci, Lacoste and Prada stores line the streets of downtown Baku.

Twinkle


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To open and shut the eye rapidly; to blink; to wink.
  • (v. i.) To shine with an intermitted or a broken, quavering light; to flash at intervals; to sparkle; to scintillate.
  • (n.) A closing or opening, or a quick motion, of the eye; a wink or sparkle of the eye.
  • (n.) A brief flash or gleam, esp. when rapidly repeated.
  • (n.) The time of a wink; a twinkling.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Doesn’t it ever need a break?” “Maybe it likes it,” he shoots back, a twinkle in his eye.
  • (2) The Scottish defence did well not to panic, there, as Walcott's twinkle-toed run had penalty written all over it.
  • (3) In the study involving 24 women in the final few months of pregnancy, half were asked to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to their foetuses for five days a week.
  • (4) Maybe you understand the twinkling of the stars, the falling of objects to earth or what it takes to be an astronaut, or you’ve battled a dragon or discovered just how stinky the stinky past could be in a horrible history.
  • (5) He has this hilarious, very dry sense of humour, and just before I left, I said to him, ‘So what do you think?’ And he typed out, ‘I wish you luck.’ And then, with this really cheeky twinkle in his eye, added, ‘But not too much.’” Demis Hassabis gives me his own disarming smile.
  • (6) She had moved on from playing loud, blousy, funny girls on television ( Twinkle in Dinnerladies with Victoria Wood , and Veronica in Shameless ) to complex, heavy-duty characters (Myra Hindley in See No Evil ) and sophisticated, career-driven women (barrister Martha Costello in Peter Moffat’s Silk ).
  • (7) He reminded me of Fulton Mackay, who played the fierce jailer in Porridge, though without the actor's humorous twinkle.
  • (8) We’ll definitely show that on the day.” There was a twinkle in his eye and a slight grin on his face but Bale, make no mistake, was deadly serious.
  • (9) "I haven't read the newspapers," Simon twinkled during an X Factor press conference in LA on Thursday, which was bizarrely described by one media outlet as "ill-timed".
  • (10) I should warn you,” she said, twinkling, “I’ve met all my best friends in the front rows of shows.” We exchanged phones and “added” each other on Facebook.
  • (11) Since the magnitude of the changes in flow distributions was the same after 4 min as it was in several hours, we conclude that much of the "twinkling" is a high frequency phenomenon occurring over seconds to a few minutes.
  • (12) Facebook Twitter Pinterest As Twinkle in Dinnerladies – it was Victoria Wood who told her she would be typecast if she didn’t lose weight.
  • (13) It was with the Emilia-Romagna outfit that Berardi first broke through as a twinkle-toed teenager and it is with them that he remains, in spite of a goalscoring record that even the greats would envy.
  • (14) He's just twinkled his way into the box and then spread panic among the Chelsea defenders with a cross that cannoned off two of them before Cole cleared.
  • (15) It's been around for less than a year, yet Heidi Thomas's wildly successful period drama feels as if it's been with us forever, with each episode essentially a yuletide special in miniature, laden with air-punching nuns and twinkling tales of placentas past.
  • (16) They made one video, a 30-second version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star , which was watched about 15,000 times in the first month after its release in August 2011.
  • (17) The other members of the Justice League remain superpowered twinkles in the studio's eye (bar The Green Lantern, who's more of an unattractive snot-like stain after the debacle of Martin Campbell's 2011 non-event ).
  • (18) Along the path runs a silhouetted Pip, the last vestiges of sunlight again twinkling off the water as he passes two unoccupied gallows, a sorry bunch of dry flowers in one hand, clouds smeared across the sky like oil paint.
  • (19) Oak-panelled walls are hung with hunting scenes and pre-independence state crests, while the chandeliers twinkle.
  • (20) The United team was strong on paper, with Rooney and Van Persie supported by the twinkle-toed Juan Mata and Adnan Januzaj.