Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To coax by flattery or wheedling; cajole.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To flatter; caress; coax or cajole with complaisant speech or caressing act.
- To render pleasing, alluring, or enticing.
- To offer or bestow blandly or caressingly: as, to blandish words or favors.
- To assume a caressing or blandishing manner.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To persuade someone by using flattery; to cajole.
- v. transitive To praise someone dishonestly; to flatter or butter up.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To flatter with kind words or affectionate actions; to caress; to cajole.
- v. To make agreeable and enticing.
WordNet 3.0
- v. praise somewhat dishonestly
Etymologies
- From Middle English blandishen, from Middle French blandir, from Latin blanditia ("flattery, coaxing") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English blandishen, from Old French blandir, blandiss-, from Latin blandīrī, from blandus, flattering; see mel-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“To that end, I occasionally ask beg blandish published authors into coming here to Author!”
“I gave him a spell to make him immune from her blandish - ments, having been warned by her other selfs behavior in Proton.”
“And all the "human rights" or other ludicrous pretexts the muslims - Sunni or Shi'ia - blandish as justification for Israel's piecemeal destruction are so much hot air.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“She has let you blandish her into that most difficult and dangerous of tasks, telling the truth to a friend.”
“Those of lesser means often save up for them, get a paper route, or blandish kith and kin into donating toward them as birthday presents, in much the same way as anyone else who wants something out of his price range.”
“Find someone whose LITERARY opinion you trust — such as, say, a great writer you met at a conference, or the person in your writing group who keeps being asked to send sample chapters — and blandish her into giving your query letter and synopsis a solid reading.”
“As Arianna points out in her latest, the continuing administration effort to blandish away the obvious in Iraq, the dreadful realization that suicide attacks are unpreventable -- it all conspires to produce the resentment which pours forth in those school and community gatherings the Times describes, where parents are establishing that this is Bush's war, not theirs.”
“Find someone whose opinion you trust – such as, say, a great writer you met at a conference, or the person in your writing group who keeps being asked to send sample chapters – and blandish her into giving your query letter and synopsis a solid reading.”
“Cutty Sark was watery; The Famous Grouse was blandish; plain sweetness and alcohol burn contested for primacy in Grant's; Black & White was just blah.”
“The invested interests spend so much national wealth in preparing the Olympic Games to blandish the international, launch so much propaganda about the 2008 Olympics to gloss over official corruption and social inequality!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘blandish’.
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New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 234 more...
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phrontistery - b
List of words from phrontistery.info
bywoner, byssus, byssiferous, byssaceous, byrnie, butyric, butyraceous, buttery, buteonine, bunting, burdet, broma and 582 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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coax
cajole, blandish, inveigle, palaver, croodle, woo, charm, sweet-talk, tweedle, persuade, gentle, jolly and 5 more...
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SAT words
abase, abate, abet, abject, abjure, abrogate, abscond, abstruse, accolade, accommodating, accost, accretion and 202 more...
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GRE Reference
A list of words unfamiliar to me that I have repeatedly encountered in GRE question sets.
parochial, clique, salacious, aegis, ostracize, conceited, sacrilegious, inane, serendipity, gourmand, polemic, tenuous and 138 more...
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Dan: You read this already. — Your p...
Long ago, I learned a useful habit from a good friend: Every time he looked up a word in his dictionary, he’d put a mark next to it. His explanation for this was vague at best, but I understood a...
dittography, haplology, haplography, idiomology, cacoepy, orthoepist, psellism, pronunciation spe..., galbe, theropod, publican, sciolist and 111 more...
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work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
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jaradgiese's Words
paronomasia, ostensible, insouciant, sobriquet, burlesque, insalubrious, apotheosis, hyperbole, connubial, felicity, florid, conurbation and 642 more...
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Learned
ambergris, andiron, aphelion, austral, bellicose, boreal, bravura, chaff, chicanery, creditable, credulous, decamp and 223 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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My preparation
for GRE ofcourse
morbid, disparate, incipient, exonerate, engross, ebullient, predilection, propensity, allure, qualms, chastise, perpetuate and 111 more...
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inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Trump that synonym!
Better alternatives for common words.
ex cathedra, screed, de rigueur, palpable, wheedle, piebald, incongruity, cassandra, xantippe, ebullient, exuberant, fainéant and 178 more...
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the Island of the Day Before
phoebus, promontory, succor, indite, sickle, cerulean, tenebrous, specter, bastion, clemency, miasma, nocturlabe and 112 more...
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