Blob
nounA small rounded mass or drop of a soft, thick, or sticky substance.
How to spell blob
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce blob
What does blob mean?
- nounA small rounded mass or drop of a soft, thick, or sticky substance.
Blob in a sentence
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A blob of ketchup landed on his clean shirt.
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She squeezed a blob of glue onto the back of the photo.
Where does blob come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Blob is one of those compact English words that seems to have been built by sound and shape rather than borrowed from any classical tongue. It first surfaces in late Middle English, around the 1400s, where it referred to a bubble or a small rounded lump, and it sits among a cluster of similar-sounding words like 'bleb', 'blab', and 'bubble' that all suggest something swollen, soft, or rounded. The form is generally considered imitative or expressive: the lips close on the 'b' sounds the way they might around a small drop or globule, which is why the word feels so suited to a splash of paint or a spot of jelly. There is no foreign root to translate here, only a native Germanic feel for sound-symbolic coinage. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, the only real trap is the single 'b' at the end rather than a doubled one, and the way the vowel reads as a clear short 'o'.
How the word is built
- blob (single unanalysable root, likely imitative of a soft rounded mass)
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