blanch

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

• transitive v. To take the color from; bleach.
• transitive v. To whiten (a growing plant or plant part) by covering to cut off direct light.
• transitive v. To whiten (a metal) by soaking in acid or by coating with tin.
• transitive v. To scald (almonds, for example) in order to loosen the skin.
• transitive v. To scald (food) briefly, as before freezing or as a preliminary stage in preparing a dish.
• transitive v. To cause to turn white or become pale.
• intransitive v. To turn white or become pale: Their faces blanched in terror.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

• n. ore, not in masses, but mixed with other minerals.
• v. To grow or become white
• v. To take the color out of, and make white; to bleach
• v. To avoid, as from fear; to evade; to leave unnoticed.
• v. To cause to turn aside or back
• v. To use evasion.
• v. To cook by dipping briefly into boiling water, then directly into cold water.
• v. To whiten, as the surface of meat, by plunging into boiling water and afterwards into cold, so as to harden the surface and retain the juices
• v. To bleach by excluding the light, as the stalks or leaves of plants, by earthing them up or tying them together
• v. To make white by removing the skin of, as by scalding
• v. To give a white luster to (silver, before stamping, in the process of coining)
• v. To cover (sheet iron) with a coating of tin.
• v. To whiten; to give a favorable appearance to; to whitewash; to palliate

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

• transitive v. To take the color out of, and make white; to bleach.
• transitive v. To bleach by excluding the light, as the stalks or leaves of plants, by earthing them up or tying them together.
• transitive v.
• transitive v. To make white by removing the skin of, as by scalding.
• transitive v. To whiten, as the surface of meat, by plunging into boiling water and afterwards into cold, so as to harden the surface and retain the juices.
• transitive v. To give a white luster to (silver, before stamping, in the process of coining.).
• transitive v. To cover (sheet iron) with a coating of tin.
• transitive v. Fig.: To whiten; to give a favorable appearance to; to whitewash; to palliate.
• intransitive v. To grow or become white.
• transitive v. To avoid, as from fear; to evade; to leave unnoticed.
• transitive v. To cause to turn aside or back.
• intransitive v. To use evasion.
• n. Ore, not in masses, but mixed with other minerals.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

• White; pale.
• Same as blench.
• literally, pale fever; hence, to have the blanch fever is either to be in love or to be sick with wantonness.
• n. Same as blanc, 3.
• n. A white spot on the skin.
• n. In mining, a piece of ore found isolated in the hard rock.
• To make white; whiten by depriving of color; render colorless: as, to blanch linen.
• In horticulture, to whiten or prevent from becoming green by excluding the light: a process applied to the stems or leaves of plants, such as celery, lettuce, sea-kale, etc.
• To make pale, as with sickness, fear, cold, etc.
• Figuratively, to give a fair appearance to, as an immoral act; palliate; slur; pass over.
• In cookery, to soak (as meat or vegetables) in hot water, or to scald by a short, rapid boiling, for the purpose of producing firmness or whiteness.
• In the arts, to whiten or make lustrous (as metals) by acids or other means; also, to cover with a thin coating of tin.
• Synonyms and Etiolate, etc. See whiten.
• To become white; turn pale.
• To shun or avoid, as from fear; evade.
• To shrink; shift; equivocate.
• n. Lead ore mixed with other minerals.
• To blanch silver, to oxidize copper superficially, when present in an alloy with silver, by heating to redness in the air, and then dissolving out the oxid of copper by dilute sulphuric acid, thus leaving the surface of the object with the white appearance of pure silver.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• v. cook (vegetables) briefly
• v. turn pale, as if in fear