blarney n.1
nonsense, charming but empty chatter; also attrib .and as excl.; thus blarneyish adj.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | 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. | |
| Letters 26 Sept. (1932) I 55: I hold it (so to speak) to be all Blarney. | |
| John Bull I i: Have done with your blarney, Mr. Dan [...] you bogtrotter! | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | 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. | |
| Real Life in London I 133: So tip us your mauley, and no more blarney. | |
| Hist. of My Own Times (1995) 87: [I made promises], which kind of blarney quieted the objection she had to me. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Harry Lorrequer 147: They were as cunning as foxes, and could tell blarney from good sense. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 1 Apr. 2/3: Happiest men — if, cribbing votes / With all thy wonted powders of blarney. | |
![[Ind]](/static/img/flags/ind.png "India") | Memoirs of a Griffin I 108: ‘Stuff! none of your blarney’. | |
| ‘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. | |
| 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! | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 7 Oct. 3/3: Don’t think to come over us with that blarney. | |
| Manchester Spy (NH) 17 May n.p.: A full blooded, chuckel-headed [sic], blarney, thieving, murdering Irishman. | |
| 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. | |
| Ask Mamma 316: He then directed his blarney to Billy. ‘Oh, dear, he was sorry to hear he’d been ill!’. | |
| (con. 1840s–50s) 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. | |
| 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. | |
| ‘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. | |
| Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 12: ‘None av yer blarney now, Ned Roche’. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | 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. | |
| 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. | |
| ‘When the Children Come Home’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 103: ‘Be off,’ she replies, ‘with your blarney and cant.’. | |
| [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! | |
| 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. | |
| ‘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. | |
| ‘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? | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 25: He chuckled, with his usual mixture of blarney and shrewd common sense. | |
| Till Human Voices Wake Us 13: The sort of blarney doesn’t go down well with me. | |
| 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. | |
| (con. 1940s) Borstal Boy 49: Just answer the doctor [...] he hasn’t the time for any of your old blarney. | |
| Murder in Mount Holly (1999) 40: There was a bit of the Irish in him [...] Full o’ blarney, he was. | |
| (con. 1949) True Confessions (1979) 52: The thick frosting of blarney with the brain clicking away under it. | |
| Limericks Down Under 72: Kate, a colleen of Killarney, / Was full of the charm and the blarney. | |
| (con. 1930s) Emerald Square 143: He had the ‘Blarney’ too, by the bucket full. | |
| Breakfast on Pluto 144: Don’t try any of your fucking blarney on us, Paddy! | |
| Dead Long Enough 85: He still had that ridiculous tang in his TV accent, that helpful suggestion of blarney. | |
| 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. | |
| (con. 1943) Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘Let’s cut the blarney, shall we?’. | |
| Empty Wigs (t/s) 177: The entire package was a farrago of Chartist blarney , Captain Swing, all manner of Froggy communards. |
In compounds
one who is charming, but whose words are nonsensical and empty.
| On the Waterfront (1964) 181: Just [...] who had nothing but a lot of Irish oratory – a blarney boy. |
In phrases
to flatter.
| Sailors and Saints I p.185 in DSUE (1984). |
to flatter.
| in DSUE (1984). | |
| Still Waters Run Deep II ii: Ah, don’t ye be puttin’ the blarney on me. |
to deceive, to trick by verbal facility.
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 175: Tip him a good deal of the blarney. |