Please consider the sentences below:
The grass was glittering with dew.
The grass was glistening with dew.
The grass was glinting with dew.
The grass was gleaming with dew.
Below are the definitions given by my dictionary.
Glisten = (of something wet or greasy) shine with a sparkling light.
Glitter = shine with a bright, shimmering reflected light.
Glint = give out or reflect small flashes of light.
Gleam = shine brightly, especially with reflected light.
I know that even if two words are synonyms, they can imply different meanings, even when the dictionary definitions look almost identical (as they do here). Are there any such differences between the implied meanings of the example sentences above?
Best Answer
There's not much of a difference between any of the words in that sentence, and indeed they are all very similar in general. If I were to assign shades of meaning to them, I'd probably break it down like this, more or less in decreasing order of brightness/eye-catchingness:
Glitter: a bright, shiny sparkle that twinkles rapidly.
Glisten: a soft, less-pronounced sparkle with occasional twinkles.
Gleam: a continuous soft shine with occasional twinkles of additional brightness.
Glint: a single twinkle or sparkle.
In regard to your example sentence, I'd say "glittered" is probably the most fitting since there is a lot of grass and a lot of individual dew drops, each of which can catch the light and cause a twinkle, so the overall effect would be a lot of small, rapid twinkles.