Green’s Dictionary of Slang

blarney n.1

[Blarney, a village near Cork in Ireland. Within the castle is an inscribed stone, which is hard to approach, and the popular belief is that any one who kisses this ‘Blarney stone’ will ever after be gifted with a persuasive, plausible tongue; note Bartlett, Dict. of Americanisms, 1848: ‘Dr. Jamieson doubts the Irish origin of this word, and adopts the French etymon baliverne, a lie, a fib, gull; also, a babbling, idle discourse’]

nonsense, charming but empty chatter; also attrib .and as excl.; thus blarneyish adj.

[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Blarney; he has licked the Blarney stone; he deals in the wonderful, or tips us the traveller.
[UK]W. Scott Letters 26 Sept. (1932) I 55: I hold it (so to speak) to be all Blarney.
[UK]G. Colman Yngr John Bull I i: Have done with your blarney, Mr. Dan [...] you bogtrotter!
[US]Horry & Weems Life of General F. Marion (1816) 50: Can any honest man believe that this same Captain Johnson, who had been, as Paddy says, ‘sticking the blarney into me at that rate,’ could have been such a scoundrel [...] and try all in his power to trick me.
[UK]‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 133: So tip us your mauley, and no more blarney.
[US]W. Otter Hist. of My Own Times (1995) 87: [I made promises], which kind of blarney quieted the objection she had to me.
[Ire]C.J. Lever Harry Lorrequer 147: They were as cunning as foxes, and could tell blarney from good sense.
[Aus]Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 1 Apr. 2/3: Happiest men — if, cribbing votes / With all thy wonted powders of blarney.
[Ind]Bellew Memoirs of a Griffin I 108: ‘Stuff! none of your blarney’.
[UK]‘Epistle from Joe Muggins’s Dog’ in Era (London) 4 Apr. 4/1: Muster M— has had another griffin from Middleham; they want me for ‘The Liberator’ now, but that’s all Blarney and botheration.
[US]‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 63: Better be careful of yer blarney, my cove, or you’ll know the game uv fives afore ye die!
[Aus]Bell’s Life in Sydney 7 Oct. 3/3: Don’t think to come over us with that blarney.
[US]Manchester Spy (NH) 17 May n.p.: A full blooded, chuckel-headed [sic], blarney, thieving, murdering Irishman.
[US]Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 25 Oct. n.p.: [H]e is either slandering some woman, or else he is getting off some of his Irish blarney.
[UK]R.S. Surtees Ask Mamma 316: He then directed his blarney to Billy. ‘Oh, dear, he was sorry to hear he’d been ill!’.
[UK](con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 113/1: You may have noticed, that when an Irishman doesn’t get out of temper, he never loses his politeness, or rather his blarney.
[US]Carson Dly Appeal (MV) 15 July 2/1: It may yet succeed if [...] putty-headed, faint-hearted, weak Union men continue to quail before bluster and blarny.
[Ire] ‘Brogue and my Blarney and Botherin’ Ways’ in Yankee Paddy Comic Song Book 5: With my tongue and my blarney and botherin’ ways. / Five sweethearts I’ve got.
[Ind]H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 12: ‘None av yer blarney now, Ned Roche’.
[NZ]N.Z. Observer (Auckland) 18 Sept. 1: On the occasion of a first appearance like this, it is usual, I am told, to put forward one of those delectable effusions of ‘blarney’ and ‘blatheum’ known as an inaugural address.
[UK]S. Watson Wops the Waif 4/2: Wops, who was ‘getting a new tog-out,’ [...] knew too much to be taken in by the blarney of the old Jew.
[Aus]H. Lawson ‘When the Children Come Home’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 103: ‘Be off,’ she replies, ‘with your blarney and cant.’.
[UK]Chevalier & West [perf. Albert Chevalier] ‘Cosmopolitan Courtship’ 🎵 I know ye me bhoy! Ye may call it love, / But blarney’s the word for it all the same!
[UK]G.B. Shaw John Bull’s Other Island Act I: Very friendly of you, Larry, old man, but all blarney. I like blarney; but it’s rot, all the same.
[US]Cole Porter ‘Bridget McGuire’ 🎵 Now she has steam yachts and motors galore, / And though happy she often will long / To hear Pat’s ‘blarney,’ as in days of yore.
[US]O.R. Cohen ‘Forbidden Fruit’ in Breezy Stories Jan. 🌐 Six-foot-one of handsome looks and iron sinew, a blarneyish tongue and a don’t-give-a-hoot manner?
[Ire]Joyce Ulysses 612: The usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let XX equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim.
[UK]Auden & Isherwood Ascent of F6 I iii: Look here, Ransom; let’s understand each other. I’m not going to talk a lot of blarney to you about England and Idealism.
[UK]S. Jackson An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 25: He chuckled, with his usual mixture of blarney and shrewd common sense.
[NZ]I. Hamilton Till Human Voices Wake Us 13: The sort of blarney doesn’t go down well with me.
[Aus]D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 209: I thought he was going to blub. He started turning on the Irish blarney about it being all the dough he had.
[Ire](con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 49: Just answer the doctor [...] he hasn’t the time for any of your old blarney.
[UK]P. Theroux Murder in Mount Holly (1999) 40: There was a bit of the Irish in him [...] Full o’ blarney, he was.
[US](con. 1949) J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 52: The thick frosting of blarney with the brain clicking away under it.
[Aus]Benjamin & Pearl Limericks Down Under 72: Kate, a colleen of Killarney, / Was full of the charm and the blarney.
[Ire](con. 1930s) L. Redmond Emerald Square 143: He had the ‘Blarney’ too, by the bucket full.
[Ire]P. McCabe Breakfast on Pluto 144: Don’t try any of your fucking blarney on us, Paddy!
[UK]J. Hawes Dead Long Enough 85: He still had that ridiculous tang in his TV accent, that helpful suggestion of blarney.
[UK]Observer 1 Feb. 33/2: A well-run campaign can engage online communities without any fashionable, Obama-style brains or la-di-dah Obama-style blarney.
[Aus](con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘Let’s cut the blarney, shall we?’.
[UK]J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 177: The entire package was a farrago of Chartist blarney , Captain Swing, all manner of Froggy communards.

In compounds

blarney boy (n.)

one who is charming, but whose words are nonsensical and empty.

[US]B. Schulberg On the Waterfront (1964) 181: Just [...] who had nothing but a lot of Irish oratory – a blarney boy.

In phrases