blub
/blʌb/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Ireland/blʊb/
blub verb: to cry, whine or blubber (usually carries a connotation of disapproval).
Verb
blub (third-person singular simple present blubs, present participle blubbing, simple past and past participle blubbed)
- To cry, whine or blubber (usually carries a connotation of disapproval).
- 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.1935 November, Arthur Leo Zagat, chapter IV, in Dime Mystery Magazine
- Yes. I know where she is. She's blubbing behind the gym. Shall I fetch her out?1953, C. S. Lewis, chapter 1, in The Silver Chair
- To swell; to puff out, as with weeping.
Noun
blub (plural blubs)
- The act of blubbing.
- […] 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 […]1857, William Platt, chapter IX, in Mothers and Sons: A Story of Real Life, volume 1, London: Charles J. Skeet, page 150
Adjective
blub (not comparable)
- Swollen, puffed, protruding.
- 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.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 5: Lotus Eaters]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 77
Examples of blub in a sentence
- Thompson-Wright had blubbed, the others hadn't.1989, William Trevor, “Children of the Headmaster”, in Collected Stories, Penguin, published 1992, pages 1235–6:
- I know people DO blub, she thought, but this is ridiculous.2016 March 10, Nigel Smith, chapter 19, in Nathalia Buttface and the Totally Embarrassing Bridesmaid Disaster (Nathalia Buttface; 4)...
Forms of blub
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | blubs |
| present participle | blubbing |
| past participle | blubbed |
| past | blubbed |
| Noun | |
| plural | blubs |
Origin of blub
Onomatopoeic. Compare bleb and blob.
Phrases with blub
Words that rhyme with blub
Questions about blub
- What does blub mean?
- Blub means to cry, whine or blubber (usually carries a connotation of disapproval).
- How do you use blub in a sentence?
- Thompson-Wright had blubbed, the others hadn't.
- What part of speech is blub?
- Blub can be a verb, a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce blub?
- Blub is pronounced /blʌb/.
- What is the past tense of blub?
- The past tense of blub is blubbed.
Words near blub in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blub (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-blub.wav.
Cite this entry: “blub.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blub. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.