Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GLASS, n. [Sax. glæs; Sw. Dan. G. and D. glas; so named from its color; W. glâs., from llâs, blue, azure, green, fresh, pale; glasu, to make blue, to become green or verdant, to grow pale, to dawn; glaslys, woad, L. glastum; glesid, blueness. Tacitus, de Mor. Ger. 45, mentions glesum, amber collected in the Baltic, probably the same word, and so named from its clearness. Greenness is usually named from vegetation or growing, as L. viridis, from vireo.]

1. A hard, brittle, transparent, factitious substance, formed by fusing sand with fixed alkalies. Encyc. A definite compound of silicic acid and potassa or soda. The pure silicates of potassa and soda, are soluble in water; but by the conjunction of a silicate of lime, magnesia, alumina, or any other earth, it becomes insoluble in water. In chimistry, a substance or mixture, earthy, saline or metallic, brought by fusion to the state of a hard, brittle, transparent mass, whose fracture is conchoidal. Aikin.
2. A glass vessel of any kind; as a drinking-glass.
3. A mirror; a looking-glass.
4. A vessel to be filled with sand for measuring time; as an hour-glass.
5. The destined time of man's life. His glass is run.
6. The quantity of liquor that a glass vessel contains. Drink a glass of wine with me.
7. A vessel that shows the weight of the air. Tatler.
8. A perspective glass; as, an optic glass. Milton.
9. The time which a glass runs, or in which it is exhausted of sand. The seamen's watch-glass is half an hour. We say, a ship fought three glasses.
10. Glasses, in the plural, spectacles.