blague
blague noun: mendacious boasting that lacks seriousness; falsehood or humbug, especially when it is told mockingly or without the expectation that anyone believes it.
Noun
blague (countable and uncountable, plural blagues)
- Mendacious boasting that lacks seriousness; falsehood or humbug, especially when it is told mockingly or without the expectation that anyone believes it.
- The difference is this: one may be obliged to maintain a falsehood from feelings of pride or self-respect, but a blague can be given up without a scruple.1855, Sketches of the Italian Revolution, page 78
- I wonder if the cholera-sick fishing harbour is so sweet, after all! Blague probably. Blague, blague! Brides, love, Naples, joie de vivre, ancient, modern, liberal, conservative, ideal, real, natural—blague. Blague all the way.1913, Lizzy Lind-af-Hageby, August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt
Verb
blague (third-person singular simple present blagues, present participle blaguing, simple past and past participle blagued)
- To utter blague; to tell a falsehood that no one seriously believes; to bullshit.
- "Yes," said Farnham, "so the woman told me, and she added that they were authentic of the twelfth century. asked her if she could not throw off a century or two in consideration of the hard times, and she laughed, and said I blagued, and honestly she didn't know how old they were, but it was...1899, John Hay, The Bread-winners: A Social Study, page 95
- "When he blagued just now about his crosses, I thought there was something in him,” whispered the Eastern hero to the painter.1901, Honoré de Balzac, A Start in Life, page 84
Examples of blague in a sentence
- The blague differs from the laughter of, say, Hugo's L'Homme qui rit, just as it is distinct from irony, which is never coarse or untrue, and indeed presupposes a whole shared system of values.1992, Philippe Hamon-Page, Expositions: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-century France, page 180:
- But whereas blague, as Pound seems to envisage it, begins with pomp and ends in derision, this poem emerges from circumstances of derision2008, Geoffrey Hill, Kenneth Haynes, Collected Critical Writings, page 257:
- I left the ward with a heavy heart, though blagued to my mother later that he had been in good spirits .2013, Simon Halliday, City Centre, page 166:
Forms of blague
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | blagues |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | blagues |
| present participle | blaguing |
| past participle | blagued |
| past | blagued |
Origin of blague
Borrowed from French blague. Doublet of belly.
Questions about blague
- What does blague mean?
- Blague means mendacious boasting that lacks seriousness; falsehood or humbug, especially when it is told mockingly or without the expectation that anyone believes it.
- How do you use blague in a sentence?
- The blague differs from the laughter of, say, Hugo's L'Homme qui rit, just as it is distinct from irony, which is never coarse or untrue, and indeed presupposes a whole shared system of values.
- What part of speech is blague?
- Blague can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of blague?
- The plural of blague is blagues.
Words near blague in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blague (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “blague.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blague. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.