Meaning & use
glean
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To work out or collect facts or knowledge slowly, in small pieces, from several places.
Grammar: Takes an object and often from: glean facts from reports.
Patterns
- glean something from something
- glean that something is true
From the few emails she had seen, the lawyer gleaned that the deal was already in trouble.
We gleaned a surprising amount about the town's history from old street signs.
Reporters gleaned what they could from the crowd outside the court.
verbtransitive or intransitiveold-fashioned
To gather leftover grain or crops from a field after the main harvest has been taken.
Grammar: Can take an object (glean the wheat) or stand alone (they gleaned after the harvest).
Patterns
- glean a field
- glean after the harvest
Poor families once had the right to glean the fields after the reapers had finished.
Villagers gleaned the last ears of barley before the rain arrived.
Word forms
| third person singular | gleans |
|---|---|
| past tense | gleaned |
| past participle | gleaned |
| -ing form | gleaning |
Common combinations
- glean information
- The detective gleaned information from every witness, however small the detail.
- glean insight into
- You can glean insight into a culture by studying its food.
- glean from
- What can we glean from last year's survey results?
- glean a clue
- He gleaned a clue about her plans from an unfinished note.
- barely glean
- I could barely glean the main idea from the garbled message.
Synonyms and how they differ
- gather
- Gather is a general word for collecting anything, while glean stresses small pieces taken patiently from many sources.
- infer
- Infer means to reach a conclusion by reasoning, whereas glean focuses on picking up the pieces of information themselves.
- scrape together
- Scrape together is informal and suggests barely finding enough, while glean sounds more careful and neutral.
Word family
Commonly confused: glean or glen?
glean vs glen
A glen is a narrow valley, especially in Scotland. It is a noun and has no connection with collecting information.
Practice
From the leaked memo, analysts could ___ only a rough idea of the company's plans.
Choose one answer.
Glean means to collect small pieces of information. Gloat and glare are about attitude or looking, and glaze is about coating, so none fits an idea gathered from a memo.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “glean”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.