What's the difference between glisten and sheen?

Glisten


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To sparkle or shine; especially, to shine with a mild, subdued, and fitful luster; to emit a soft, scintillating light; to gleam; as, the glistening stars.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) McArdle – who plays Abrahams, the Jewish runner who sees proving himself on the track as a way of combatting antisemitism – is glistening with sweat.
  • (2) I found the new hope in my heart," he said, eyes glistening with tears.
  • (3) Somewhere, glistening in the ashes, there might remain a copy of Jane Eyre.
  • (4) I opened my eyes to see the pristine beach glistening in the clean dawn air.
  • (5) Bake for a further 10-15 minutes until well browned and glistening.
  • (6) I sat there, bundled up against the cold, on benches carved from ice, with glistening icy walls and snow flurries falling through ventilation holes, while a folk band played glowing instruments – carved out of ice.
  • (7) This he achieves by rearranging her intestines, picking through them and, somewhere among the glistening loops, cutting a section in two and rerouting the ends.
  • (8) Fuchsin glistening colonies as well as the total bacterial counts on Sabouraud agar and Leifson agar as well as on kanamycin-esculin agar showed frequency peaks which were one power of ten lower.
  • (9) Marks & Spencer is offering fruit juice laced with glitter and smoked salmon topped with gold leaf; Sainsbury will be selling edible glistening Christmas baubles made from chocolate; while Asda is offering a glitter-topped version of the traditional pudding.
  • (10) These buttery potato scones glisten on my plate like Grecian tiles.
  • (11) The examination of the fundus showed dense, glistening bright yellow crystalline deposits around the maculae.
  • (12) Necropsy findings included generalized edema of the visceral organs and diffuse red glistening foci on the capsular and cut surfaces of the cortex of both kidneys.
  • (13) The overwhelming impression is one of tasteful reserve, of glistening cream paint and shining green and black railings – until you pause to examine the enormous heft of the houses: vast, detached palaces, with too many windows to count, on a scale dwarfing other private homes in London .
  • (14) Both lesions were surgically excised and found to be cystic in nature and filled with glistening gelatinous material consistent with partially absorbed, encysted gelatin film (Gelfilm).
  • (15) After Tony and his shiny head did the dirty with Tracy Barlow, the goddess of pure evil, Liz went straight into a rebound fling with Dan, a man so slimy he glistens.
  • (16) In my place I'm fine, but if I use my glistening podium, to talk to the people I grew up with, or signed on with or used drugs with, vulnerable overlooked, underserved, ordinary people, people that can't sue them as I am, then out come the fangs.
  • (17) The typical chondrosarcoma is low in grade but malignant and it arises in the nasal cavity as a large, pale, glistening mass.
  • (18) As the plane came into land in Seattle over the glistening waters of the Puget Sound, after a long journey from Iraq, he only had one thought: “Now we’ll be safe.
  • (19) More than 180 miles west of Barclays Bank's glistening skyscraper in the heart of Canary Wharf, a small group of tax protesters will gather outside one of its lesser-known branches.
  • (20) The disease was characterized by juvenile degeneration of the vitreous with detachment of the vitreous body and some floating vitreous opacities, cystoid degeneration of the peripheral retina with whitish glistening stippled areas of superficial retinal degeneration, spotty hyperpigmentation, patches of retinal atrophy with pigmentations, occasional atrophic retinal holes, and in four family members at the age of 4 to 12 years, unilateral or bilateral retinal detachment with breaks in the peripheral retina.

Sheen


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Bright; glittering; radiant; fair; showy; sheeny.
  • (v. i.) To shine; to glisten.
  • (n.) Brightness; splendor; glitter.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) His body was found on the pavement of Portman Avenue, in East Sheen, an affluent west London suburb, shortly before 7.45am on 9 September last year, just after flight BA76 from Luanda, the Angolan capital, passed overhead.
  • (2) In vitro pure-culture studies were conducted to assess growth and sheen formation of groundwater bacteria on M-Endo medium incubated under reduced oxygen concentrations (0, 4, 8, 12, and 16%).
  • (3) Sheen accused the Danish authorities of being complicit in the “brutal slaughter”.
  • (4) The colour to channel for next season is, in fact, not matt buttercup yellow but the gold-foil sheen best explained as the colour of the toffee penny in a box of Quality Street.
  • (5) The engines, gearboxes and even the doors now have a complexity that sees them constructed elsewhere, but the transformation on this line of the dull sheen of aluminium parts into a moving vehicle at the other end is still something to behold.
  • (6) The absence of China and India at the highest level will take some of the sheen off, but they can possibly come back on board if leaders of industrialised countries make serious commitments about what they are going to do to mitigate emissions and help developing nations.
  • (7) The president, played by Martin Sheen, had to hustle to find new neckwear from someone on his staff with less than a minute to air.
  • (8) Suspect sheen-forming colonies were analyzed to determine purity and identity of cultures.
  • (9) Vinterberg's version stars Carey Mulligan as headstrong Bathsheba Everdene, while Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge and Matthias Schoenarts play the contrasting suitors who jockey for her attention.
  • (10) In pride of place above the fireplace sits a shot of his sons, alongside one of him interviewing Mandela and a US magazine cover which followed the marathon 1977 confrontation with Richard Nixon that earned him a place in history - and provided the subject matter for an award-winning play that will this year become a film starring Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon.
  • (11) A ctor Michael Sheen looks a bit like a lot of people and sooner or later usually ends up playing them.
  • (12) Writer Feargus O’Sullivan thinks of the presence of artists and creative workers as adding a “cursory sheen to a place’s transformation”, describing the process as “ artwashing ”.
  • (13) If you fly over the Gulf today, you will see the sheen of oil everywhere .
  • (14) Dilute suspensions of normal erythrocytes exhibit a pearl-like sheen (nacre) when subjected to flow.
  • (15) Having had to give up Twitter (she's an avid user), her replacement social exchange will now be with the likes of Jedward and Kerry Katona, the most recognisable of the celebrities, or bare-knuckle fighter Paddy Doherty from My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, a paparazzo, a male model and a couple of actors (American superstars Charlie Sheen, Pamela Anderson and Mike Tyson were conspicuous by their absence).
  • (16) The ophthalmoscopic appearance showed a segmental, grayish metallic sheen in association with bone spicule pigmentation, which radiated from the disk along the temporal vessel arcades and joined temporal to the macula.
  • (17) Stephen Sheen, Cardiff • Post your answers – and new questions – below or email them to nq@theguardian.com .
  • (18) The actor Michael Sheen, best known for playing Tony Blair in a series of TV dramas and the award-winning film The Queen, has delivered a passionate defence of the NHS against “bland” politicians in thrall to the market from both Conservative and Labour parties.
  • (19) As a teenager, he was as much of a presence in American magazines for teenage girls as Corey Haim and Charlie Sheen.
  • (20) These were quite dark, with or without a metallic sheen, and closely resembled the colonies of lactose fermenting Escherichia coli on EMB agar.