What's the difference between gloss and sheen?

Gloss


Definition:

  • (n.) Brightness or luster of a body proceeding from a smooth surface; polish; as, the gloss of silk; cloth is calendered to give it a gloss.
  • (n.) A specious appearance; superficial quality or show.
  • (v. t.) To give a superficial luster or gloss to; to make smooth and shining; as, to gloss cloth.
  • (n.) A foreign, archaic, technical, or other uncommon word requiring explanation.
  • (n.) An interpretation, consisting of one or more words, interlinear or marginal; an explanatory note or comment; a running commentary.
  • (n.) A false or specious explanation.
  • (v. t.) To render clear and evident by comments; to illustrate; to explain; to annotate.
  • (v. t.) To give a specious appearance to; to render specious and plausible; to palliate by specious explanation.
  • (v. i.) To make comments; to comment; to explain.
  • (v. i.) To make sly remarks, or insinuations.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I’m not someone to gloss over the BBC’s faults, problems or challenges – I see it as part of my job to identify and pursue them.
  • (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) Behind these numbers, behind this legal jargon are actual families who have not had justice for decades and decades … some of this can get glossed over when you’re just thinking about it in policy terms.
  • (4) And if there is some patronising note in your question about that glossed-over quality of many other American films then I would say: I dislike that, too.
  • (5) The former Crystal Palace striker opened the scoring with a 28th-minute header but his penalty miss took the gloss off an otherwise impressive full debut.
  • (6) This glosses over the issue of how many the security forces are killing.
  • (7) For examples of a successful legacy we are customarily steered towards the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, even though, as always seems to be glossed over, the organisers faced a £100m shortfall with just weeks to go and had to be bailed out by Sport England (£30m), the government (£30m) and Manchester City Council (£40m).
  • (8) It not only stigmatizes the mentally ill – who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it – but glosses over the role that misogyny and gun culture play (and just how foreseeable violence like this is) in a sexist society.
  • (9) Jenkins glosses over the lack of impact, insisting the document was always meant to be a "slow burn."
  • (10) Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point.
  • (11) The range includes products such as lip gloss (in claret red, precious gold and velvet mauve), bath crystals and body lotions.
  • (12) Half the energy secretary's statement concentrated on clean coal technology, glossing over its erratic progress, and the reality that even if carbon capture and storage is made to work, it will only have a marginal impact on emissions by 2020.
  • (13) "But I think people will gloss over that," he said.
  • (14) Perhaps, as children, their Sunday school teachers had glossed over the details of the single most significant event in the Christian narrative.
  • (15) The British and Irish governments sought yesterday to put some positive gloss on the Haass talks.
  • (16) Flat surfaces of artificially-carious enamel, softened in an intra-oral experiment, and naturally-carious (white spot) enamel were polished to a high gloss with diamond lapping compound, rendering them almost featureless by secondary electron scanning electron microscopy.
  • (17) It was, of course, a speech that glossed over any failings on the chancellor's part.
  • (18) It’s a quality that draws attention to the inferiority-complex under which so many British dramas labour – the fake American gloss of Luther, say, or Line of Duty.
  • (19) And beautiful Beyoncé tells us that since becoming a mother, she eschews big primping routines, opting for "no make-up, just sunglasses and lip gloss".
  • (20) After the election, liberal friends drew solace in a shared Facebook story claiming that Barack Obama had somehow saved them from the worst of a Trump administration by permanently protecting the right to an abortion – sadly glossing over the all-important role of the supreme court in such matters.

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.