blarney

Other forms of blarney

plural

blarneys·

past tense

blarneyed·

present participle

blarneying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about blarney

What does blarney mean?

blarney means "flattery designed to gain favor". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in blarney?

blarney has 2 syllables and divides as blar-ney under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for blarney?

Close synonyms include coaxing, soft soap, sweet talk, wheedle, cajole. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is blarney a common word?

blarney is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.