"B" Word Origins

From Old English "blǣtan," an imitation of the sound sheep and goats make.

Possibly onomatopoeic, similarly to blob and blubber.

Imitative — it mimics the sound of gagging.

From Middle English blek (“ink”), from Old Norse blek (“black tint, ink”), from Old English blæc (“black tint or dye, ink”), from Proto-West Germanic *blak, from Proto-Germanic *blaką (“that which is black; blackness”).

From French bled, from Algerian Arabic, from Arabic بِلَاد (bilād).

From Middle English blee, ble, from Old English blēo, bleoh (“color, hue; complexion, form”), from Proto-West Germanic *blīu (“color, blee”). Cognate with Scots ble, blee, blie (“color, complexion”), Old Frisian blī, blie (“color, hue; complexion”) (whence North Frisian bläy, Saterland Frisian Bläier), Middle Dutch blie, blye (“color”). Doublet of bly.

From Old English "blēdan," derived from the word for blood — the same root also gives us "blood" itself.

From "bleed" plus the agent suffix "-er."

By surface analysis, bleed + -ing.

Onomatopoeic — the word imitates the sound itself.

Onomatopoeia.

Imitative, similar to "blech," mimicking a small sound of disgust or apathy.

From Old French "blesmir," meaning to make pale or bruise, ultimately from a Germanic root meaning "pale."

From blemish + -less.

From blemish + -ment.

From Old English "blandan" or Old Norse "blanda," both meaning "to mix," tracing to a common Germanic root.

From "blend" plus "-er."

From "blend" plus the "-ing" ending.

From Old English "bletsian," originally meaning to sanctify with blood in a religious rite — related to the word "blood" itself.

From Middle English blessedly, blessidly, blestly. By surface analysis, blessed + -ly.

Inherited from Middle English blessednesse, equivalent to blessed + -ness.

From Old English "blētsung," formed from "bless" plus "-ing."

Probably a blend of bleck + blatch.

From Middle English blew, from Old English blēow, from Proto-West Germanic *blē.

Of disputed origin, possibly Irish, Cornish (from a word for "wolf"), or a variant of the English surname Blythe.

Origin uncertain, but likely related to an Old English word meaning "to shine or grow pale" — possibly linked to the same root as "bleak."

From "blight" plus "-ed."

From "blight" plus "-er."

Corruption of the Hindustani विलायती (vilāytī) / وِلایَتی (vilāyatī, “foreign”), which is related to Arabic ولاية (wilāyah, “state, province”), whence also, through Turkish, vilayet. Sir Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell explained in their Anglo-Indian dictionary, Hobson-Jobson, published in 1886, that the word was used in the names of several kinds of exotic foreign things, especially those that the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato, विलायती बैंगन (vilāytī baiṅgan, literally “foreign aubergine”), and especially to soda water, which was commonly called विलायती पानी (vilāytī pānī, literally “foreign water”). Blighty was the inevitable British soldier’s corruption of it. But it only came into common use as a term for Britain at the beginning of the First World War in France about 1915. It turns up in popular songs "There’s a ship that’s bound for Blighty", "We wish we were in Blighty", and "Take me back to dear old Blighty, put me on the train for London town", and in Wilfred Owen's poems, as well as many other places. The sense of a minor wound comes from attributive use of the noun, as in “a Blighty wound,” “a Blighty one,” 1916. In modern Australian usage, Ol

A softened version of "(God) blind me," used to avoid swearing outright.

Modification of blooming.

Most historians think it's onomatopoeic, imitating the sound of thumping the airship's fabric, first recorded in England around 1916.

From Middle English blinnen, from Old English blinnan (“to stop, cease”), from Proto-Germanic *bilinnaną (“to turn aside, swerve from”), from Proto-Indo-European *ley-, *leya- (“to deflect, turn away, vanish, slip”); equivalent to be- + lin. Cognate with Old High German bilinnan (“to yield, stop, forlet, give away”), Old Norse linna (Swedish dialectal linna, “to pause, rest”). See also lin.

From Old English "blind," from a Proto-Germanic root of the same meaning.

From blind + -er.

From Middle English words meaning "struck blind" — the original idea was of someone made blind by force, and over time the "strike" part faded into today's spelling with "fold," suggesting a folded cloth over the eyes.

Inherited from Middle English *blyndehode, blyndehede. By surface analysis, blind + -hood.

By surface analysis, blind + -ing.

Formed from "blind" plus the adverb ending "-ly," which turns the adjective into a description of how something is done.

From Old English blindnes, built from blind plus the noun-forming suffix -ness.

A compound of blind and side, originally describing the unseen side of a moving vehicle before it took on its figurative "catch someone off guard" sense.

From bling + -ish.

From Old English roots related to *blincan, ultimately tied to a Proto-Germanic word meaning "to shine, gleam" — the same family as the word blank.

Formed from blink plus the agent suffix -er, originally naming anything that flashes or blocks vision, later specialised to the horse harness piece and the car light.

From blink plus the adjective suffix -y.

An imitative (onomatopoeic) word, mimicking the short electronic beep of the sound or signal it describes.

From a variation of blurt.

From blirt + -y.