lee-ring

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verb (used without object)

to look with a sideways or oblique glance, especially suggestive of lascivious interest or sly and malicious intention: I can't concentrate with you leering at me.

noun

a lascivious or sly look.

Origin:
1520–30; perhaps v. use of obsolete leer cheek (Middle English leor, Old English hlēor; cognate with Old Norse hlȳr (plural))

Related forms

leer·ing·ly, adverb

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To lee-ring

Collins

World English Dictionary

leer (lɪə)

—vb
1.	(intr) to give an oblique, sneering, or suggestive look or grin

—n
2.	such a look

[C16: perhaps verbal use of obsolete leer cheek, from Old English hlēor]

'leering

—*adj*, —n

'leeringly

—*adv*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Lee-ring is always a great word to know.

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a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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Word Origin & History

leer

"to look obliquely" (now usually implying "with a lustful or malicious intent"), 1530, from M.E. noun ler "cheek," from O.E. hleor "the cheek, the face," from P.Gmc. *khleuzas "near the ear," from *kleuso- "ear," from PIE root *kleu- "to hear" (see listen). The notion is

probably of "looking askance" (cf. figurative development of cheek). The noun is first attested 1598.

Matching Quote

"They were two strong men, these oddly different generals, and they represented the strengths of two conflicting currents that, through them, had come into final collision. Back of Robert E. Lee was the notion that the old aristocratic concept might somehow survive and be dominant in American life. Lee was tidewater Virginia, and in his background were family, culture, and tradition.... Grant, the son of a tanner on the Western frontier, was everything Lee was not. He had come up the hard way and embodied nothing in particular except the eternal toughness and sinewy fiber of the men who grew up beyond the mountains. He was one of a body of men who owed reverence and obeisance to no one, who were self-reliant to a fault, who cared hardly anything for the past but who had a sharp eye for the future."

-Bruce Catton

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