The Collaborative International Dictionary
Blench \Blench\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Blenched; p. pr. & vb. n. Blenching.] [OE. blenchen to blench, elude, deceive, AS. blencan to deceive; akin to Icel. blekkja to impose upon. Prop. a causative of blink to make to wink, to deceive. See Blink, and cf. 3d Blanch.]
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To shrink; to start back; to draw back, from lack of courage or resolution; to flinch; to quail.
Blench not at thy chosen lot.
--Bryant.This painful, heroic task he undertook, and never blenched from its fulfillment.
--Jeffrey. -
To fly off; to turn aside. [Obs.]
Though sometimes you do blench from this to that.
--Shak.
Wiktionary
vb. (en-past of: blench)
Usage examples of "blenched".
Terrified by that threat, Valerie had blenched, and had felt her spirit deserting her.
He blenched at the idea—I don’t mean that you could see him blench, for of course you couldn’t see it without you scraped him, and I didn’t care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench was there, just the same, and within a book-cover’s thickness of the surface, too—blenched, and trembled.
But younger knights, who were facing their first dragons in battle, blenched and cowered, some shaming themselves by crying out or turning from the awesome sight before them.
Bertrem, who had not blenched once in the face of the enemy, turned deathly pale, and backed up instantly, letting the sunlight fall once more upon the page.
As he saw Trout's little mascot hand he blenched and I whipped forward and grabbed his knife hand with my left and slipped my right under his armpit.
The blood crept slowly back into his blenched face, and his glance grew in insolence, almost in menace.
Vorontsyev heard the voice and, as if at the study door of a feared pedagogue, blenched.
Then that, too, seemed complete, and he blenched before the mass of documentation stretching back over twelve months.