A quick, brief look or touch; often used to mean 'touching at an angle' rather than directly.
From Middle English 'glance,' possibly from Old French 'glacer' (to slide), related to 'ice' and the idea of something slipping or sliding. The connection to brief contact comes from the idea of something grazing a surface.
In physics, 'glancing' still means hitting at an angle—like how a meteor that grazes Earth's atmosphere at a glancing angle might skip off into space. The same word works for both a quick eye-look and a physics collision because they're both about indirect contact.
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