blarney

[ blahr-nee ]

SEE DEFINITION OF blarney

nounflattery

Synonyms for blarney

MOST RELEVANT

EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR BLARNEY

All her share of the blarney of Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of her tongue.

But why shouldn't you blarney with a gentleman, when you began by saving his life?

Blarney her cliverly, and work her to a foam against the McBrides.

If anybody wanted money, he kissed the Blarney Stone and applied to Pete.

The Irish race appear to have kissed the Blarney stone in globo.

In Ireland, she had kissed the Blarney stone and picked shamrock in the ruins.

The blarney to put yourself over, and the ability to back it up.

And yet, who could write of an Irish tour and make no reference to Blarney.

No one can wheedle like an Irish beggar or "blarney" like an Irish ward boss.

Its all sham and blarney, and a burning shame to you, to boot.

WORD ORIGIN

1796, from Blarney Stone (which is said to make a persuasive flatterer of any who kiss it), in a castle near Cork, Ireland. As Bartlett explains it, the reason is the difficulty of the feat of kissing the stone where it sits high up in the battlement: "to have ascended it, was proof of perseverence, courage, and agility, whereof many are supposed to claim the honor who never achieved the adventure." So to have kissed the Blarney Stone came to mean "to tell wonderful tales" ["Dictionary of Americanisms," 1848]. The word reached wide currency through Lady Blarney, the smooth-talking flatterer in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" (1766). As a verb from 1803.