blub

English

Etymology

Onomatopoeic. Compare bleb and blob.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /blʌb/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (Northern England, Ireland) IPA^(key): /blʊb/
• Rhymes: -ʌb

Verb

blub (third-person singular simple present blubs, present participle blubbing, simple past and past participle blubbed)

1. To cry, whine or blubber (usually carries a connotation of disapproval).
   • 1935 November, Arthur Leo Zagat, chapter IV, in Dime Mystery Magazine:

     The grotesquely ornamented goats, crazed by the Hamelin piping, stampeded toward him. They piled up, shoving one another from the causeway, screaming with almost human agony as the black mud and the quicksand caught them, screaming till their shrieks blubbed into silence.

   • 1953, C. S. Lewis, chapter 1, in The Silver Chair:

     Yes. I know where she is. She's blubbing behind the gym. Shall I fetch her out?

   • 1989, William Trevor, “Children of the Headmaster”, in Collected Stories, Penguin, published 1992, pages 1235–6:

     Baddle, Thompson-Wright and Wardle had been caned for giving cheek. Thompson-Wright had blubbed, the others hadn't.

   • 1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section II, page 24:

     ‘He . . . he made me cry, sir, and I was too embarrassed to come in blubbing, so I went and hid in the music-room until I felt better.’
     This was all terribly unfair on poor old Biffen, whom Adrian rather adored for his snowy hair and perpetual air of benign astonishment. And ‘blubbing’ . . . Blubbing went out with ‘decent’ and ‘ripping’. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.

   • 2016 March 10, Nigel Smith, chapter 19, in Nathalia Buttface and the Totally Embarrassing Bridesmaid Disaster (Nathalia Buttface; 4), London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, pages 230–231:

     Why does EVERYONE cry at a wedding? Nat thought, stomping her way up the little stone steps to the balcony where the church organs always were. I know people DO blub, she thought, but this is ridiculous.

2. (obsolete) To swell; to puff out, as with weeping.

Noun

blub (plural blubs)

1. The act of blubbing.
   • 1857, William Platt, chapter IX, in Mothers and Sons: A Story of Real Life‎, volume 1, London: Charles J. Skeet, page 150:

     […] hang me, then, if I've the heart to come again to the old place, till I've had a thorough good blub, and that's the fact of it […]

Adjective

blub (not comparable)

1. (attributively) Swollen, puffed, protruding.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 5: Lotus Eaters]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 77:

     He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening.

Anagrams

• bulb