blithering
blithering Lexical Profile
blithering Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Complete or utter (used strictly before a noun as an intensifier to emphasize someone's foolishness or incompetence).
"He felt like a blithering idiot after locking his keys inside the running car."
Talking foolishly, incoherently, or nonsensically; babbling.
"The play features a comical scene with a blithering bureaucrat who cannot finish a single coherent thought."
• noun
Senseless, foolish, or long-winded talk; babble.
"The committee grew weary of his endless blithering and called for an immediate vote."
Word Nuance & Usage
Used strictly attributively before a negative noun (most famously in the collocation "blithering idiot") rather than predicatively after a linking verb.
• Rhymes for blithering
Word Origin & Etymology
A late 19th-century dialectal variant of "blethering," from the Scottish and northern English verb "blether" (to talk nonsense), ultimately from Old Norse "blaðra" (to mutter or wag the tongue).