Talk:blick

blike
RFV (for blick it is RFV for Etymology 1 only). OED only has Middle English evidence (headword blik). EEBO gives us a few uses which are of no assistance: an adjective perhaps meaning "light"; a noun in a list of metals; a use of a verb "blyke" in a quoted translation of Psalm 132:14-15, perhaps translating "bless", although the translation is under attack for being "false". This, that and the other (talk) 06:20, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

cited, but what I found looks neither obsolete nor intransitive. (???) Kiwima (talk) 07:28, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Nonces? Errors for something? Really strange. I can also find someone a lamp being "blicked out" and a tape recorder that "blicked off". There look to be two senses: something to do with light, and "make a brief, soft, crisp noise". This, that and the other (talk) 08:55, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * On one hand, Radley and White could be typos for flicked or clicked, and/or Wilding, Cook and Radley could be errors for blink (ditto a lamp blin/cking out). Authors describe lights, people, etc blinking across things, e.g. (from Google Books) "angry red dots blinked across the mapped space, bending toward the cruiser", "As the last one [of some things Jack "lit...up like Christmas trees"] blinked across the nave, a smoking shadow on the horizon, Jack dropped out of the sky", "sunlight blinked obliquely on the small, imperfect panes", "A faint flicker of sunlight blinked off the hills". They only use blick once, and most use blink elsewhere (e.g. "that light blinked out to nothingness"); Cook also has sentences like "In the absence of any mature adult concern from Shabble - who surface [sic] briefly once or twice, but immediately splashed down under the water again", as if the work might be poorly copyedited, which makes a typo more plausible. OTOH, that doesn't actually rule out that blick and blink are separate words and that at least some of the authors could be intentionally using blick. I note the English Dialect Dictionary has a verb blicker (Wilshire, Dorset, Somerset) "to shine intermittently, to flicker, glimmer", with examples from speakers ("I zeen a light a blickerin' droo th' tallot dwoor", "of a burnt house it would be said ‘The vire wad'n a-douted — keeps on blickerin'.’"), and an adjective blicant  "shining, bright", citing an example from 1873 and deriving the word from Middle English blik(n)en. (The oldest cite in the Middle English Dictionary is "c1450", close to the end of their coverage.) It seems at least conceivable we're dealing with a dialectal survival of bliken, or an extended use of the other verb blick ("to exhibit brightening or iridescence"), or a modification of blink and/or flick(er) influenced by either of those or by blicker. - -sche (discuss) 19:24, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed, looking more carefully, I see the EDD even has "blikken" "to shine" in Yorkshire dialect, with an example "the sun blikkens on the windows" and a comparison to Middle English "For alle þe blomes of þe bojes (boughs) were blyknande perles". So it could well be that blick is a dialectal survival, like blicker. - -sche (discuss) 21:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)