Word.ws English Dictionary

blat

/blæt/

blat verb: to cry, as a calf, sheep, or goat.

Verb

blat (third-person singular simple present blats, present participle blatting, simple past and past participle blatted)

  1. (intransitive) To cry, as a calf, sheep, or goat.
    • Near-synonym: baa (sheep or goat)
    Synonyms:
    bleat, baa
  2. (intransitive) To make a senseless noise.
    • A moment later the engine roared into life. Exhaust blatted through the straight-pipes; people stopped on the street to look.1991, Stephen King, Needful Things
  3. To talk inconsiderately; blab.
  4. To produce an overrich or overblown sound on a brass instrument such as a trumpet, trombone, or tuba.
  5. (transitive) To utter loudly or foolishly; blurt.

Noun (1)

blat (plural blats)

  1. (US, slang) A newspaper.
    • "Of course I warned off the dicks and the FBI, but they're madder'n hell and we've got to get out of town at once. It'll miss the mornings but it'll be splashed all over the afternoon blatts and radio and TV'll have it."1954, Ian Fleming, “True or False?”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 85

Noun (2)

blat (uncountable)

  1. The Soviet system of connections and social relationships; one's social or business network (in Russian or Soviet society).
    • To open a new business in Russia you need blat.
    • Alena Ledeneva's book is the first to analyse blat in all its historical, socio-economic and cultural aspects, and to explore its implications for post-Soviet society. In a socialist distribution system which resulted in constant shortages, blat developed into an 'economy of favours' which shadowed...1998, Alena V. Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours. Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange, University of London, →ISBN, [Marketing description of that book hardly written by the author]
    Synonyms:
    guanxi

Noun (3) capitalized: BLAT

BLAT

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato: a sandwich made with these main ingredients.

Examples of blat in a sentence

  • Alena Ledeneva's book is the first to analyse blat in all its historical, socio-economic and cultural aspects, and to explore its implications for post-Soviet society.1998, Alena V. Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours. Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange, University of London, →ISBN, [Marketing...
  • The bribe caused the inflation of the social capital defined as blat.2005, Adam Czarnota, Martin Krygier, Wojciech Sadurski, Rethinking the Rule of Law After Communism, page 334:
  • I argue that just as blat was an essential type of know-how of Soviet socialism, these postsocialist informal practices represent the “know-how” of post-Soviet Russia.2006, Alena V. Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works. The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business (Culture and Society...

Synonyms of blat

Forms of blat

Verb
third-person singular presentblats
present participleblatting
past participleblatted
pastblatted
Noun
pluralblats
alternative formblatt

Origin of blat

Imitative. First attested in 1846 in the intransitive sense of "bleat". Compare English bleat, Old English blǣtan (“to bleat”).

Borrowed from German Blatt (“newspaper”). Doublet of blade.

Borrowed from Russian блат (blat), from Polish blat (“cover, umbrella”) or Yiddish בלאַט (blat, “leaf, list”). Doublet of blade.

Words that rhyme with blat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blat

What does blat mean?
Blat means to cry, as a calf, sheep, or goat.
How do you use blat in a sentence?
Alena Ledeneva's book is the first to analyse blat in all its historical, socio-economic and cultural aspects, and to explore its implications for post-Soviet society.
What part of speech is blat?
Blat can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce blat?
Blat is pronounced /blæt/.
What is the past tense of blat?
The past tense of blat is blatted.

Words near blat in the dictionary

  1. Blaszczyk
  2. Blaszczyks
  3. blasé
  4. blasély
  5. blaséness
  6. blat
  7. blatancies
  8. blatancy
  9. blatant
  10. blatantly
  11. blatantness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blat (page history and authors); BLAT (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-blat.wav.

Cite this entry: “blat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.