Definition of "gaze"

Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Acts 1:11

Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.

1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 13]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […]

She just sat there very straight, gazing across the moon-washed garden.

1936, F.J. Thwaites, The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards Publishing, published 1940, page 64

In fact, for Antonioni this gazing is probably the most fundamental of all cognitive activities[.]

1998, Michelangelo Antonioni, Unfinished Business: Screenplays, Scenerios, and Ideas, page xv

Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd, / And gaz'd a while the ample Skie

1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

I searched for form and landFor years and years I roamedI gazed a gazeless stare.

1970, David Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World

Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.

1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Those howers that with gentle worke did frame / The louely gaze where euery eye doth dwell.

1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 5”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley

Made of my Enemies the ſcorn and gaze;

1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], page 11

She counters the tendency to focus on critical strategies of resisting the male gaze, raising the issue of the female spectator.

2003, Amelia Jones, The feminism and visual culture reader, page 35