Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Speech or action expressive of affection or kindness, and tending to win the heart; an artful caress; flattering attention; cajolery; endearment.
- n. Something bland or pleasing; that which pleases or allures.
Wiktionary
- n. Flattering speech or actions designed to persuade or influence.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The act of blandishing; a word or act expressive of affection or kindness, and tending to win the heart; soft words and artful caresses; cajolery; allurement.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the act of urging by means of teasing or flattery
- n. flattery intended to persuade
Etymologies
- blandish + -ment (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Those locks which stung like scorpions along her cheeks were bent, and her neck was bowed in blandishment, and her hips quivered as she went.”
“Reuters Education may wean away youth like Kasab from terror: Clinton Phuket: The confession of lone surviving 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab shows that he was "a young man without much purpose in life", US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, pitching for good education and jobs to wean away the youth from "blandishment" of terrorist groups.”
The Wall Street Journal: India News Digest: Air India May Get Phased Equity Infusion
“This daughter of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may once more see the smoke of his own chimneys.”
“So far, so good, so much more credible—and spoiled only slightly by the blandishment that those that fail should present plans for recapitalization "as swiftly as possible.”
The Wall Street Journal: Is This the End of the Beginning for the Euro Crisis?
“I think this will be a key selling point: the old saying, "All roads lead to Rome", was a Western blandishment; all roads really lead to me.”
“But the other two were still older the blandishment of his child-like innocence.”
“It went on, until finally she acknowledged that Ibrahim Zarzi was immune to blandishment, refusal, shame, threat, or pressure.”
“What a whopper, though she smiled anyway over the blandishment.”
“Every little bit helps' as the blandishment has it.”
The Guardian: Coalition to propose automatic charity donations at cash machines
“This blandishment, however, is not the cause of the critical backlash against Remember Me.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘blandishment’.
-
GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
-
GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
-
EN - eloquence in public speaking
Key words from "The Training of a Public Speaker" by Grenville Kleiser (New York and London, 1920)
beget, imago, approbation, orator, peroration, Cicero, eloquence, elocution, rhetoric, premeditate, plead, Isocrates and 264 more...
-
May 2013
ungulate, kvetch, scintilla, clandestine, vis-a-vis, pygmy, dour, sodomite, erythematous, purveyor, blandishment, tontine and 1 more...
-
Land
A list of terms for land, landholdings, or words that contain the string -land-.
scabland, wheatland, cornland, slander, land-locked, dryland, riceland, clandestine, acreage, island, Iceland, Greenland and 269 more...
-
-ments aplenty
The stranger, the better.
battlement, devilment, ailment, dismemberment, embezzlement, blandishment, entanglement, engorgement, embankment, elopement, disgruntlement, hutment and 77 more...
-
Words That Mean Things
I found most of these words in books! That means they MUST be good.
flinders, periplus, palaver, midden, cadge, legerdemain, flense, lapidary, geas, bailey, susurration, satoris and 128 more...
-
to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
-
Favorite Words
pablum, maundy, histrionic, adamant, ascribe, verbiage, insouciant, erudite, gregarious, superfluous, banal, obdurate and 280 more...
-
catinthehat345's List
compere, reticle, colophon, miasma, eldritch, raconteur, plectrum, poltroon, vestibular, pastiche, cravat, acumen and 179 more...
-
SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
-
Good for Academics
Gahh!! Study!
supplant, usurp, finagle, winnow, draconian, abut, collude, swindle, objectify, incite, decadent, obstinate and 327 more...
-
Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
-
GRE Words
abjure, unswear, state, rescission, indemnification, ab, reny, abnegate, vitiated, vitiate, adumbrated, abash and 378 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for blandishment.
dailyword This word was used in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Jun 13, 2012
bilby
Or shall I mention, where celestial Truth
Her awful light discloses, to bestow
A more majestic pomp on Beauty's frame?
For man loves knowledge, and the beams of Truth
More welcome touch his understanding's eye,
Than all the blandishments of sound his ear,
Than all of taste his tongue.
- Mark Akenside, 'The Pleasures Of Imagination'. Sep 7, 2009
rolig Rod Serling, in “The Mike Wallace Interview�? (1959), talking about his television play The Velvet Alley:
RS: . . . what I tried to suggest dramatically was that when you get into the big money particularly in the kind of detonating, exciting, explosive, overnight way that our industry permits, there are certain blandishments that a guy can succumb to and many do.
MW: Such as?
RS: A preoccupation with status, with the symbols of status, with the heated swimming pool that’s ten feet longer than the neighbors’, with the big car, with the concern about billing, all these things, in a sense rather minute things, really, in context, but that become disproportionately large in a guy’s mind.
MW: And because those become so large, what becomes small?
RS: I think, probably the really valuable things, and I know this sounds corny and sort of buckwheatish to say that things like having a family, being concerned with raising children, being concerned with where they go to school, being concerned with a good marital relationship – all these things, I think, are of the essence.
May 22, 2008