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• glen
  glen

  noun

  a small, narrow, secluded valley.
• Glen
  Glen

  noun

  a male or female given name.

glen

¹ American  

[glen] / glɛn /

noun

• glens
  plural

1. a small, narrow, secluded valley.

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Glen ² American  

[glen] / glɛn /

noun

1. a male or female given name.

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glen British  

/ ɡlɛn /

noun

1. a narrow and deep mountain valley, esp in Scotland or Ireland

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• glenlike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• glens
  plural

Etymology

Origin of glen

1480–90; < Irish, Scots Gaelic gleann; cognate with Welsh glynn

Explanation

A glen is a narrow valley deep in the mountains. Glens often form streams. The top of a mountain is the peak, and the lower parts are valleys. A glen is a valley that's narrow and secluded—it’s deep in the mountains. A glen could form a stream, or it could be lush and green. If you are on top of a mountain looking down, you may see several glens.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

glen Glen glens

"It's quite tough to see, it's not just the trees that are gone, all the wildlife in the glen has been devastated too," she said.

From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2025

Each non-Pee-wee appearance required the audience to recalibrate our expectations and remove Reubens from the glen plaid suits and pomade-slicked hairdo for which we came to know him.

From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2023

In a leafy glen in a very small, beautiful moment, the trees watched too.

From Salon ● Oct. 8, 2022

As the wind and rain batters them, many of the group ponder Lady Evelyn's final journey up the glen to her chosen burial spot.

From BBC ● Jun. 14, 2022

It was long and oval, shaped like a great spear-head thrust deep into the northern glen; but its southern end was beyond the shadows under the sunlit sky.

From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Last month marked a grim milestone: the combined volume of both reservoirs hit their lowest level since 1957, when Glen Canyon Dam was still under construction.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026

When evacuation warnings started rolling in on Monday, Morris, who manages Glen Oaks Big Sur, spent the day explaining the situation to guests at the property and those who had reservations in the coming days.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

The funeral is due to be held later for Oscar-winning Irish singer and songwriter Glen Hansard who died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin last week.

From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026

State laws can make it difficult for communities to recover money from delinquent residents, said Glen Weinberg, founder of Fairview Commercial Lending.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026

The Shady Glen residents were the living waiting to die.

From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman

There are suspicions the Cairngorms lynx are abandoned pets, or were let go by people who want to see the animals reinstated to wooded hills and glens.

From BBC ● Feb. 13, 2025

Although most of the park fills up daily with birthday parties, off-leash dogs, and brass bands, it’s also home to a network of shady glens, murmuring creeks, and still ponds.

From Slate ● Aug. 31, 2023

Indeed, consumers may want their vehicles not only to look good in, say, a wooded glen, but also to project the very idea that they care about wooded glens.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2023

Knoydart is one of the most rugged and remote parts of the British Isles, accessible only by boat or via a two-day hike through glacier-sculpted glens and mountains.

From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2022

There were no natural glens in all of Bakersfield.

From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan