A poetic term for a glance or look, especially a penetrating or significant one, as if vision were a beam of light.
Compound of 'eye' and 'beam' (from Old English 'béam' meaning 'tree' or 'ray'). This poetic metaphor was especially popular in Renaissance literature.
Shakespeare and Renaissance poets imagined vision as actual light beams shooting from the eye—they didn't know about light entering the eye, so they wrote beautiful metaphors about beams being cast outward.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.