fleer /fleer/. verb or noun. To grin or grimace; to sneer or jeer; to jibe…or the look of one doing so. A mocking speech. Unknown origin, possibly related to Norwegian and Swedish flira, Danish flire (to grin, to laugh inappropriately).
“What, dares the slave
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?”
(William Shakespeare)
“Hebuiza laughed aloud, a fleering, raucous sound.” (Robert Boyczuk)
“The gas-lights hissed with a faint, malicious susurration, and except for their infinitesimal mechanical vivacity, that jetted fleeringly from obscenely open small slits, all life was extinguished.” (Hermann Broch)
“Nat wore the look he got when he was listening to something amazing that was new to him. A fleer of analysis, like he was startled to learn that he could have missed this before, given that he knew everything about anything worth knowing.” (Michael Chabon)
“My jaw muscles tightened and I think my lips fleered back like a wolf’s at the kill.” (John Steinbeck)
“I have always seen her critical, scornful and fleering; but now it is with genuine ill nature that she tears those she calls her friends to pieces.” (Simone De Beauvoir)
“As I went up by Ovillers
In mud and water cold to the knee,
There went three jeering, fleering spectres,
That walked abreast and talked of me.”
(Ivor Gurney)