Blurry

How to spell blurry

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blurry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blurry mean?

1. adjectiveNot clear or sharply defined; out of focus or smeared in appearance.

Blurry in a sentence

• The photo came out blurry because the camera moved.

• Without his glasses the road signs looked blurry.

Where does blurry come from?

Language of origin: Other

Blurry is the adjective formed from the noun and verb blur, which appeared in English around the late 1500s. The origin of blur itself is genuinely uncertain, but most scholars suspect a connection with the older word blear, meaning dim, watery, or sore eyes, and it may simply have been an imitative or expressive coinage suggesting something smeared or smudged. The earliest sense of blur was a literal smear or stain on a page, and only later did it broaden to mean anything indistinct or out of focus. The suffix -y, a very old native English ending meaning 'full of' or 'tending to', turned the noun into an adjective describing things that look smeared or unclear. The doubling of the r before -y follows the regular English pattern of doubling a final consonant after a short stressed vowel, which is exactly the spelling trap many adults trip over.

How the word is built

• blur (smear, indistinct mark)
• -y (adjective suffix), with the r doubled to keep the short vowel sound