Bling

How to spell bling

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bling

What does bling mean?

1. nounFlashy, expensive jewellery or other ostentatious accessories worn to display wealth.
2. adjectiveConspicuously showy and expensive in a flashy way.

Bling in a sentence

• noun

  The rapper arrived at the awards covered in gold bling.

• adjective

  The hotel lobby had a very bling chandelier dripping with crystal.

• noun

  She keeps her bling in a locked drawer beside the bed.

• adjective

  His new phone case looked far too bling for a job interview.

Where does bling come from?

Language of origin: Other

Bling is a modern coinage that imitates a sound rather than descending from an ancient root. It is what linguists call an onomatopoeic or echoic word, suggesting the bright chime or flash of light glancing off polished metal and gemstones. It rose out of American hip-hop culture in the late 1990s and was propelled into wide use by the 1999 song 'Bling Bling' recorded by the New Orleans rapper B.G. with Cash Money artists, where the doubled form 'bling-bling' evoked sparkling diamonds and chains. From there it spread rapidly into mainstream English on both sides of the Atlantic during the early 2000s, settling into the shorter single form 'bling'. Because it is built on a sound effect and not on a Latin or Greek stem, the spelling has no etymological logic to lean on; learners simply have to remember the plain consonant cluster 'bl' followed by 'ing'.

How the word is built

• bling (whole word, imitative; no separable prefix, root, or suffix)