Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Speech or action expressive of affection or kindness, and tending to win the heart; an artful caress; flattering attention; cajolery; endearment.
- noun Something bland or pleasing; that which pleases or allures.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The act of blandishing; a word or act expressive of affection or kindness, and tending to win the heart; soft words and artful caresses; cajolery; allurement.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Flattering speech or actions designed topersuade orinfluence .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the act of urging by means of teasing or flattery
- noun flattery intended to persuade
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Those locks which stung like scorpions along her cheeks were bent, and her neck was bowed in blandishment, and her hips quivered as she went.
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Reuters Education may wean away youth like Kasab from terror: Clinton Phuket: The confession of lone surviving 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab shows that he was "a young man without much purpose in life", US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, pitching for good education and jobs to wean away the youth from "blandishment" of terrorist groups.
India News Digest: Air India May Get Phased Equity Infusion 2009
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This daughter of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may once more see the smoke of his own chimneys.
The Odyssey 1900
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This daughter of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may once more see the smoke of his own chimneys.
The Odyssey 750? BC-650? BC Homer 1868
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So far, so good, so much more credible—and spoiled only slightly by the blandishment that those that fail should present plans for recapitalization "as swiftly as possible."
Is This the End of the Beginning for the Euro Crisis? Geoffrey T. Smith 2011
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I think this will be a key selling point: the old saying, "All roads lead to Rome", was a Western blandishment; all roads really lead to me.
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But the other two were still older the blandishment of his child-like innocence.
Chapter IV 2010
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What a whopper, though she smiled anyway over the blandishment.
Johanna Lindsey That Perfect Someone 2010
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It went on, until finally she acknowledged that Ibrahim Zarzi was immune to blandishment, refusal, shame, threat, or pressure.
Dead Zero Stephen Hunter 2010
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What a whopper, though she smiled anyway over the blandishment.
Johanna Lindsey That Perfect Someone 2010
rolig commented on the word blandishment
Rod Serling, in “The Mike Wallace Interview�? (1959), talking about his television play The Velvet Alley:
RS: . . . what I tried to suggest dramatically was that when you get into the big money particularly in the kind of detonating, exciting, explosive, overnight way that our industry permits, there are certain blandishments that a guy can succumb to and many do.
MW: Such as?
RS: A preoccupation with status, with the symbols of status, with the heated swimming pool that’s ten feet longer than the neighbors’, with the big car, with the concern about billing, all these things, in a sense rather minute things, really, in context, but that become disproportionately large in a guy’s mind.
MW: And because those become so large, what becomes small?
RS: I think, probably the really valuable things, and I know this sounds corny and sort of buckwheatish to say that things like having a family, being concerned with raising children, being concerned with where they go to school, being concerned with a good marital relationship – all these things, I think, are of the essence.
May 22, 2008
bilby commented on the word blandishment
Or shall I mention, where celestial Truth
Her awful light discloses, to bestow
A more majestic pomp on Beauty's frame?
For man loves knowledge, and the beams of Truth
More welcome touch his understanding's eye,
Than all the blandishments of sound his ear,
Than all of taste his tongue.
- Mark Akenside, 'The Pleasures Of Imagination'.
September 7, 2009
dailyword commented on the word blandishment
This word was used in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
June 13, 2012