Onomatopoeic. Comparebleb andblob.
blub (third-person singular simple presentblubs,present participleblubbing,simple past and past participleblubbed)
- Tocry,whine orblubber (usually carries a connotation of disapproval).
1935 November,Arthur Leo Zagat, chapterIV, inDime Mystery Magazine:The grotesquely ornamented goats, crazed by the Hamelin piping, stampeded toward him. They piled up, shoving one another from the causeway, screaming with almost human agony as the black mud and the quicksand caught them, screaming till their shrieksblubbed into silence.
1989,William Trevor, “Children of the Headmaster”, inCollected Stories, Penguin, published1992, pages1235–6:Baddle, Thompson-Wright and Wardle had been caned for giving cheek. Thompson-Wright hadblubbed, the others hadn't.
1991 September,Stephen Fry, chapter 1, inThe Liar, London:Heinemann,→ISBN, section II,page24:‘He . . . he made me cry, sir, and I was too embarrassed to come inblubbing, so I went and hid in the music-room until I felt better.’
This was all terribly unfair on poor old Biffen, whom Adrian rather adored for his snowy hair and perpetual air of benign astonishment. And ‘blubbing’ . . .Blubbing went out with ‘decent’ and ‘ripping’. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.
- (obsolete) To swell; to puff out, as with weeping.
blub (pluralblubs)
- The act of blubbing.
1857, William Platt, chapter IX, inMothers and Sons: A Story of Real Life[1], volume 1, London: Charles J. Skeet, page150:[…] hang me, then, if I've the heart to come again to the old place, till I've had a thorough goodblub, and that's the fact of it[…]
blub (notcomparable)
- (attributively)Swollen,puffed,protruding.
1922 February,James Joyce, “[Episode 5:Lotus Eaters]”, inUlysses, Paris:Shakespeare and Company, […],→OCLC, part II[Odyssey],page77:He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring withblub lips, entranced, listening.
