blurb
/blɝ(ː)b/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.79 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A short description of a book, film, or other work, written and used for promotional purposes.
Example Sentences
- "In a few weeks, blurbs would come back; a few, or many, depending on the book. There were certain writers we knew were always good for a blurb: Louis Untermeyer would always come through — poetry, fiction, humor — whatever, he'd send a well‐turned commendation."
- "When Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald blogged about having seen and loved “The Departed” in Toronto in a supposedly private screening last fall, Warner Brothers “scolded me very strongly,” he said, “but they still blurbed a line from my blog in their opening ad.”"
- "The unseemly business of book blurbing has been source of both humor and concern in the pages of The New Yorker."
- "Edward R. Murrow and other leading radio personalities blurbed the book, published in 1950 by Oxford University Press, and Siepmann thanked Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog in his acknowledgments."
Etymology
Coined by American artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist Gelett Burgess in 1907 on a dust jacket at a trade association dinner. The dust jacket said “YES, this is a “BLURB”!” and featured a (fictitious) “Miss Belinda Blurb” shown calling out, described as “in the act of blurbing”.