Word.ws English Dictionary

blurb

/blɝ(ː)b/

blurb noun: a short description of a book, film, or other work, written and used for promotional purposes.

Noun

blurb (plural blurbs)

  1. A short description of a book, film, or other work, written and used for promotional purposes.
    • In a few weeks, blurbs would come back; a few, or many, depending on the book. There were certain writers we knew were always good for a blurb: Louis Untermeyer would always come through — poetry, fiction, humor — whatever, he'd send a well‐turned commendation.1978 July 23, William Cole, “The Blurb and I”, in The New York Times

Verb

blurb (third-person singular simple present blurbs, present participle blurbing, simple past and past participle blurbed)

  1. (transitive) To write or quote in a blurb.
    • When Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald blogged about having seen and loved “The Departed” in Toronto in a supposedly private screening last fall, Warner Brothers “scolded me very strongly,” he said, “but they still blurbed a line from my blog in their opening ad.”2007 July 4, David M. Halbfinger, “Appearing Way Before the Film: The Review”, in New York Times
  2. (transitive) To supply with a blurb.
    • The unseemly business of book blurbing has been source of both humor and concern in the pages of The New Yorker.2012 April 17, Jon Michaud, “Blurb This!”, in The New Yorker
    • Edward R. Murrow and other leading radio personalities blurbed the book, published in 1950 by Oxford University Press, and Siepmann thanked Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog in his acknowledgments.2015, Peter Simonson, David W. Park, The International History of Communication Study, page 268

blurb meaning in Arabic and Persian

blurb in Arabic

a short description of a book, film, or other work
تَقْرِيظ taqrīẓ

blurb in Persian

a short description of a book, film, or other work
تقریظ taqriz

Forms of blurb

Noun
pluralblurbs
Verb
third-person singular presentblurbs
present participleblurbing
past participleblurbed
pastblurbed

Plural of blurb: blurbs

Origin of blurb

Coined by American artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist Gelett Burgess in 1907 on a dust jacket at a trade association dinner. The dust jacket said “YES, this is a “BLURB”!” and featured a (fictitious) “Miss Belinda Blurb” shown calling out, described as “in the act of blurbing”.

Words formed from blurb

Words that rhyme with blurb

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blurb

What does blurb mean?
Blurb means a short description of a book, film, or other work, written and used for promotional purposes.
What is blurb in Arabic?
Blurb in Arabic is تَقْرِيظ (taqrīẓ). See Blurb meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is blurb?
Blurb can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce blurb?
Blurb is pronounced /blɝ(ː)b/.
What is the plural of blurb?
The plural of blurb is blurbs.

Words near blurb in the dictionary

  1. BLUPs
  2. blur
  3. blur the line
  4. blur the lines
  5. BluRay
  6. blurb
  7. blurbable
  8. blurbage
  9. blurbed
  10. blurbee
  11. blurbees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blurb (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)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-blurb.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-blurb.wav.

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