different between blench vs flench

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bl?nt??/

Etymology 1

From Middle English blench and blenchen, from Old English blen?an (“to deceive, cheat”), from Proto-Germanic *blankijan? (“to deceive”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?ley?-. Cognate with Icelandic blekkja (“to deceive, cheat, impose upon”).. Doublet of blink, blank, blanch, bleach, and bleak.

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

1. (intransitive) To shrink; start back; give way; flinch; turn aside or fly off.
   • a. 1870, William Cullen Bryant, The Battle-Field

     Blench not at thy chosen lot.

   • 1820, Francis Jeffrey, "Life of Curran", in The Edinburgh Review May 1820

     This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfilment.

   • 1998, Andrew Hurley (translator), Jorge Louis Borges, "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrnth", Collected Fictions, Penguin Putnam, p.255

     "This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."
2. (intransitive, of the eye) To quail.
3. (transitive) To deceive; cheat.
4. (transitive) To draw back from; shrink; avoid; elude; deny, as from fear.
   • 2012, Jan 13, Polly Toynbee, "Welfare cuts: Cameron's problem is that people are nicer than he thinks", The Guardian

     Yesterday the government proclaimed no turning back, but the lords representing the likes of the disability charity Scope or Macmillan Cancer Support should make them blench.

5. (transitive) To hinder; obstruct; disconcert; foil.
6. (intransitive) To fly off; to turn aside.

Noun

blench (plural blenches)

1. A deceit; a trick.
2. A sidelong glance.

Descendants

• blanch (avoid)

Etymology 2

From Old French blanchir (“to bleach”).

Verb

blench (third-person singular simple present blenches, present participle blenching, simple past and past participle blenched)

1. (obsolete) To blanch.
   • 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Harper Perennial (2005), p.283

     The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons role in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds.

Related terms

• blench holding
• unblenching

References

Middle English

Noun

blench

1. A deceit; a trick.
   • c. 1210, MS. Cotton Caligula A IX f.246.

English

Verb

flench (third-person singular simple present flenches, present participle flenching, simple past and past participle flenched)

1. Alternative form of flense