glib
/ɡlɪb/
glib adjective: having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.
Adjective
glib (comparative glibber, superlative glibbest)
- Having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.
- glib answers
- A much more thorough examination of this period is essential, and no glib answers should be accepted as good coin.2004 August 26, Leslie Feinberg, “Survival with Setbacks”, in Workers World
- Smooth or slippery.
- a sheet of glib ice
- Artfully persuasive but insincere in nature; smooth-talking, honey-tongued, silver-tongued.
- a glib tongue
- a glib speech
- Snarky or unserious in a disrespectful way.
- Sometimes our relationship is strained, for though we both recognize each other's intelligence, he think's I'm often too serious and I think he's often too glib1986, Daniel Garrett, “Creating Ourselves: An Open Letter”, in Joseph Beam, editor, In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology, page 93
- Its style is both open and arch, never verging on glib camp but always a little removed, reducing large emotions to small observations and thereby making them all the more effective.1988 December 25, Michael Bronski, “...And They Called It Puppy Love”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 24, page 8
Verb (1)
glib (third-person singular simple present glibs, present participle glibbing, simple past and past participle glibbed)
- To make smooth or slippery.
- There is a drunken liberty of the Tongue; which, being once glibbed with intoxicating liquor, runs wild through heaven and earth; and spares neither him that is God above, nor those which are called gods on earth.1628, Joseph Hal, “Christian Liberty Laid Forth,” in The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Joseph Hall, D.D., Volume V, London: Williams & Smith, 1808, p. 366...
- And, when to all his Angels he propos'd / To draw the proud king Ahab into fraud, / That he might fall in Ramoth, they demurring, / I undertook that office, and the tongues / Of all his flattering Prophets glibb'd with lyes / To his destruction, as I had in charge.1671, John Milton, “The First Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 21, lines 371–376
Noun (1)
glib (plural glibs)
Noun (2)
glib (plural glibs)
- A mass of matted hair worn down over the eyes, formerly common in Ireland.
- Whom when she saw in wretched weedes disguiz'd, / With heary glib deform'd and meiger face, / Like ghost late risen from his grave agryz'd, / She knew him not […]1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- The Irish have, from the Scythians, mantles and long glibs, which is a thick curled bush of hair hanging down over their eyes, and monstrously disguising them.1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […]...
Verb (2)
glib (third-person singular simple present glibs, present participle glibbing, simple past and past participle glibbed)
- To castrate; to geld; to emasculate.
- Fourteen they shall not see
To bring false generations. They are co-heirs;
And I had rather glib myself than they
Should not produce fair issue.c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
- Fourteen they shall not see
glib meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
glib in Urdu
- آسان, چکنا, پھسلواں, طرار, تیز, تیزی دکھانا
glib in Bengali
- অনর্গল কিন্তু অগভীর, চটপটে কিন্তু আন্তরিকতাহীন
glib in Malayalam
- വാചാലതയുള്ള, ലോലമായ, മിനുസമുള്ള, സുഗമമായ
glib in Kannada
- ನುಣ್ಣಗಿನ, ನಯವಾದ
Examples of glib in a sentence
- As history is raided, indeed raped, by identitarians and populists, glib judgments on the past become fodder for every tribal grievance.2019 February 14, Simon Jenkins, “The Churchill row is part of the glib approach to history that gave us Brexit”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
- Rather than elevating the prose, the rhymes feel glib and the sentiment vague, shorthand for an unspecified intensity: “They wanted things they couldn’t name; they wanted rest.2026 April 28, Shahidha Bari, “Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition”, in The...
- I want that glib and oily art, / To speak and purpose not.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First...
- "We are concerned that both the ITC and Ofcom appear to have accepted this glib attempt at justification.2004 March 4, Owen Gibson, “Ofcom urged to crack down on 'glib' ITV”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
Synonyms of glib
Forms of glib
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | glibber |
| superlative | glibbest |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | glibs |
| present participle | glibbing |
| past participle | glibbed |
| past | glibbed |
| Noun | |
| plural | glibs |
Origin of glib
A shortening of either obsolete English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).
Borrowed from Irish glib.
Compare Old English and dialectal English lib (“to castrate, geld”), dialectal Danish live, Low German and Old Dutch lubben.
Words formed from glib
Words that rhyme with glib
Questions about glib
- What does glib mean?
- Glib means having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.
- What is glib in Urdu?
- Glib in Urdu is آسان, چکنا, پھسلواں. See Glib meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use glib in a sentence?
- As history is raided, indeed raped, by identitarians and populists, glib judgments on the past become fodder for every tribal grievance.
- What part of speech is glib?
- Glib can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce glib?
- Glib is pronounced /ɡlɪb/.
Words near glib in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: glib (page history and authors); glib (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Glib (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glib (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glib (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: en-us-glib.ogg, en-au-glib.ogg.
Cite this entry: “glib.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/glib. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.