blimp
/ˈblɪmp/
blimp noun: an airship constructed with a nonrigid lifting agent container.
Noun (1)
blimp (plural blimps)
- An airship constructed with a nonrigid lifting agent container.
- 2004 February 16&23, The New Yorker
- Synonyms:
- barrage balloon, Gossage, nonrigid
- Any large airborne inflatable.
- a 6 meter high blimp made by a professional inflatables company, to be flown in the skies2018 July 14, “Trump baby balloon: giant blimp takes to the sky above Edinburgh after being transported from London”, in Evening Standard
- An obese person.
- A person similar to the cartoon character Colonel Blimp; a pompous, reactionary British man.
- A soundproof cover for a video camera.
- You can create your own blimp or barney with anything that will deaden the camera noise, such as a changing bag, foam rubber, […]2015, Peter W. Rea, David K. Irving, Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video, page 209
- Synonyms:
- barney
Verb
blimp (third-person singular simple present blimps, present participle blimping, simple past and past participle blimped)
- To expand like a blimp or balloon; to become fat.
- After college, she started blimping and could no longer wear her favorite little black dress.
- Over a few years the software had blimped into typical bloatware.
- To fit (a video camera) with a soundproof cover.
Noun (2) capitalized: Blimp
Blimp (plural Blimps)
- A person considered similar to Colonel Blimp in appearance, thought, or expression, particularly (historical or archaic, derogatory) a reactionary middle-class Englishman during the Interwar Period.
- One was the military and imperialist middle class, generally nicknamed the Blimps, and the other the left-wing intelligentsia.1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, Part I
blimp meaning in Arabic
blimp in Arabic
- airship
- مُنْطَاد ذُو مُحَرِّك munṭād ḏū muḥarrik
Synonyms of blimp
Forms of blimp
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | blimps |
| plural | Blimps |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | blimps |
| present participle | blimping |
| past participle | blimped |
| past | blimped |
Origin of blimp
Origin not entirely certain. However, most historians believe that it is onomatopoeia for the sound a blimp makes when thumped. Although there is some disagreement among historians, credit for coining the term is usually given to Lt. A. D. Cunningham of the British Royal Navy in 1915. There is an often repeated, but false, alternative explanation for the term. The erroneous story is that at some time in the early 20th century, the United States military had two classes for airships: Type A-rigid and Type B-limp, hence “blimp”. In fact, A. D. Topping reports on the “Etymology of ‘Blimp’”, in the AAHS Journal, Winter 1963, that: : “there was no American ‘A-class’ of airships as such—all military aircraft, heavier or lighter-than-air were designated with ‘A’ until the appearance of B-class airships in May 1917. There was an American B airship—but there seems to be no record of any official designation of non-rigids as ‘limp’. Further, according to the Oxford Dictionary, the first appearance of the word in print was in 1916, in England, a year before the first B-class airship.”
From Colonel Blimp, a comic character created by David Low and first appearing in London's Evening Standard in April 1934.
Words formed from blimp
Phrases with blimp
Words that rhyme with blimp
Questions about blimp
- What does blimp mean?
- Blimp means an airship constructed with a nonrigid lifting agent container.
- What is blimp in Arabic?
- Blimp in Arabic is مُنْطَاد ذُو مُحَرِّك (munṭād ḏū muḥarrik). See Blimp meaning in Arabic.
- What part of speech is blimp?
- Blimp can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce blimp?
- Blimp is pronounced /ˈblɪmp/ (UK).
- What is the plural of blimp?
- The plural of blimp is blimps.
Words near blimp in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blimp (page history and authors); Blimp (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-blimp.wav.
Cite this entry: “blimp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blimp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.