Word.ws English Dictionary

blate

/bleɪt/

blate adjective: bashful, sheepish. Also the archaic form of bleat.

Adjective

blate (comparative blater, superlative blatest)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) Bashful, sheepish.
    • You'd say Not them; fine legs, and Ma struggling into her blouse would say You're no blate. Who told you they're fine?1934, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Grey Granite (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 491
  2. (Northern England, Scotland) Dull, stupid.

Also used as

blate is also the archaic form of bleat.

Forms of blate

Adjective
comparativeblater
superlativeblatest
Verb
third-person singular presentblates
present participleblating
past participleblated
pastblated

Origin of blate

Borrowed from Scots blate (“timid, sheepish”), apparently a conflation of: * Northern Middle English *blate, *blait (“pale, ghastly, terrified”), from Old English blāt (“pale, livid, ghastly”), from Proto-West Germanic *blait (“pale, discoloured”), from Proto-Germanic *blaitaz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyd- (“pale, pallid”); * Middle English bleth, bleath (“timid, soft”), from Old English blēaþ (“gentle, shy, cowardly, timid; slothful, inactive, effeminate”), from Proto-Germanic *blauþuz (“weak, timid, void, naked”). Cognate with German blassen (“to make pale”), bleich (“pale, pallid”). More at bleak, bleach.

Words formed from blate

Words that rhyme with blate

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blate

What does blate mean?
Blate means bashful, sheepish.
What part of speech is blate?
Blate is an adjective.
How do you pronounce blate?
Blate is pronounced /bleɪt/.

Words near blate in the dictionary

  1. blatch
  2. Blatchbridge
  3. Blatcherism
  4. Blatchford
  5. Blatchfords
  6. blate
  7. blated
  8. blatellaquinone
  9. blateness
  10. blatently
  11. blater

Source and license

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

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