Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A brief publicity notice, as on a book jacket.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A short
description of abook ,film , musical work, or other product written and used for promotional purposes. - verb To write or quote something in a blurb
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a promotional statement (as found on the dust jackets of books)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Your headline for this little blurb is misleading and bad reporting.
Clinton: Vetting process for administration jobs 'a nightmare' 2009
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Barth's blurb is dutifully included on the back cover of Michael Martone, an example of this book's playful charm but also clear enough warning that we should indeed take the blurb as a formulaic "genre" that ought not to be taken seriously as literary criticism.
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A blurb is kind of the best and worst of a situation don't ya think?
Angels' Blood Countdown: Vivi Anna - The Vampire's Quest Nalini Singh 2009
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But this one had a blurb from the editor of ERB-dom.
MIND MELD: Books That Hold Special Places in Our Hearts and On Our Shelves 2009
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Here's the blurb from the Who is Jenna Fox website:
Archive 2009-07-01 Nalini Singh 2009
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Here's the blurb from the Who is Jenna Fox website:
Friday Book Club & Interview with Mary E. Pearson: The Adoration of Jenna Fox Nalini Singh 2009
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Gelett Burgess (1866 – 1951) coined both blurb and tintiddle, though blurb is sometimes attributed to Brander Matthews.
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The former Eurythmics singer has been nominated for the Barclays Woman of the Year Award, which according to the blurb is given each year to an exceptional woman whose personal and public life has been both brave and bold.
Annie Lennox: 'I would have been perfect as a man' Andrew Anthony 2010
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Gelett Burgess (1866 – 1951) coined both blurb and tintiddle, though blurb is sometimes attributed to Brander Matthews.
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Great covers make me look twice and if the blurb is interesting I'll buy the book!
Countdown to Branded By Fire: 2 days to go! Nalini Singh 2009
dbmag9 commented on the word blurb
Modern life is one short bite-sized piece of information after another. The internet, symbol of the age, is designed to actively fire information at our passive eyes. Yet more so the television. On the back of books, those edifices which we once thought would weather the storm of the information age, are those brief, digestible, active and aggresive things which sum this whole sorry state up.
December 3, 2006
quotato commented on the word blurb
sounds like suburb, or worse yet, sub-blurb
December 3, 2006
seanahan commented on the word blurb
Would you use this interchangably with précis? I'm fine with having an English version of a French word that almost nobody will be able to pronounce correctly, but blurb is a little too prosaic.
December 3, 2006
sonofgroucho commented on the word blurb
Apparently, the first recorded use of this word was in 1907 in an American comic book. The cover featured a buxom young lady with the name Miss Blinda Blurb. Blurb became the term for the eye-catching advertisement on a book jacket.
February 8, 2007
oroboros commented on the word blurb
According to Wikipedia entry under "Gelett Burgess":
The word "blurb", meaning a short description of a book, film, or other product written for promotional purposes, was coined by Burgess in 1907, in attributing the cover copy of his book, Are You a Bromide?, to a Miss Belinda Blurb. His definition of "blurb" is "a flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial".
June 19, 2007
knitandpurl commented on the word blurb
David Crystal writes about the origin of blurb in By Hook or By Crook. Crystal tells the Gelett Burgess story and writes: "In a little wordbook he wrote a few years later, he defined his own term:
1 A flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial.
2 Fulsome praise; a sound like a publisher."
(Crystal, p 25)
I like the second one!
December 15, 2008