Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A pompous, reactionary, ultranationalistic person.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK A stereotype of a pompous, ex-military middle-aged man, conservative and opposed to new ideas.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any elderly pompous reactionary ultranationalistic person (after the cartoon character created by Sir David Low)
  • noun a pompous reactionary cartoon character created by Sir David Low

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Colonel Blimp, a cartoon character created by Sir David Low (1891–1963), British political cartoonist.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the name of a cartoon character created by Sir David Low.

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Examples

  • The character of Colonel Blimp originally appeared in a comic strip, but the movie's creators the idea originated elsewhere (and indeed, curiously, the name Colonel Blimp doesn't appear in the movie):

    A Special Way of Being Afraid JMW 2010

  • I've always been a little confused about the idea of Colonel Blimp.

    Michael Giltz: Movies: "Blimp" Is Back! British Gem Is Beautifully Restored Michael Giltz 2011

  • I've always been a little confused about the idea of Colonel Blimp.

    Michael Giltz: Movies: "Blimp" Is Back! British Gem Is Beautifully Restored Michael Giltz 2011

  • Tim Brown (Colonel Blimp) & Christopher Hewitt (Knucklehead) team up for the the new release from Hecq Vs Exillion.

    Hecq Vs Exillion | clusterflock 2009

  • Generally, thats remarkably useful: it stops Colonel Blimp characters forcing guilty verdicts down the throats of others, and stops the anarchy-minded from doing the reverse.

    Some views on the Jury System 2008

  • Speaking strictly as a Colonel Blimp type, some of the comments here make me regret having fought and shed blood.

    About that... Ann Althouse 2008

  • Australia's The Age used to like Hitchens but now calls him Colonel Blimp

    Archive 2005-08-01 2005

  • This is so not because of the subject — British watercolors, drawings, prints, and photographs relating to India, from 1757 to 1930 — but because a significantly large proportion of the works in the exhibit conform to the taste not of internationally minded specialists but of some ghostly Colonel Blimp eager to please an equally outdated John Bull.

    The Sahib's Pictures Welch, Stuart Cary 1986

  • In the face of all this negative news, the domestic Colonel Blimp brigade has predictably stepped up a collective effort to sell the war to an increasingly skeptical Canadian public.

    Embassy 2009

  • I'm glad she left such a legacy of wonderful performances, and even tho I loved Black Narcissus, The Innocents, and Colonel Blimp, I can't let her passing happen without mentioning The Sundowners and Perfect Strangers, favorites of mine, two small movies that show her innate grace even as a frump or a hard-working wife and mother - I found her terribly attractive as a young man, she was so believably female to me.

    C I N E B E A T S 2009

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