Blag

//blæɡ// adj, noun, verb, slang

adj, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An armed robbery or robbery involving violence; also, theft. British, slang

    "'What's he do, Micky?' / 'Armed blags is what I hear – s'posed to be one or two nice little tucks down to him that he didn't go for. He keeps well active. Someone told me he's putting one together now.[…]'"

  2. 2
    An attempt to obtain, or the means of obtaining, something by guile or persuasion; a trick. British, Ireland, informal

    "A good blag to get into a nightclub is to walk in carrying a record box."

  3. 3
    Deliberate misspelling of blog. British, Ireland, alt-of, deliberate, humorous, informal, misspelling

    "Why don't you write about it in your blag?"

  4. 4
    An act of deceiving; a con, a deception, a hoax. British, Ireland, informal

    "Because I used to run cons with him. I came up here as a nun, but that was just a blag to make money out of the miners."

Verb
  1. 1
    To obtain (something) through armed robbery or robbery involving violence, or theft; to rob; to steal. British, slang, transitive
  2. 2
    To obtain (something) for free, particularly by guile or persuasion. British, Ireland, informal, transitive

    "Can I blag a fag?"

  3. 3
    To obtain (something) for free, particularly by guile or persuasion.; To obtain (confidential information) by impersonation or other deception; also, to deceive (someone) into disclosing confidential information. British, Ireland, informal, specifically, transitive

    "The newspaper is accused of blagging details of the prime minister’s flat purchase from his solicitors."

  4. 4
    To obtain (something desired), or avoid (something undesired), through improvisation or luck; to fluke, to get away with. British, Ireland, informal, transitive

    "‘For the first six years I was a total chancer,’ he [Alan McGee] said. ‘I blagged it. All I did was keep choosing the right band and try not to fuck it up too much, which I usually did. […] [N]obody taught me to run a record company and I’ve made millions of mistakes.’"

  5. 5
    To use guile or persuasion on (someone); also, to deceive or perpetrate a hoax on (someone). British, Ireland, informal, transitive

    "He asks me afterwards if I realize what a lot of 'blagging' (bull) there is in his job. I reply, 'You blagging him or him blagging you?' / 'Oh no, blagging him,' he says. 'When you give him a ticket or something, you have to be nice to them.'"

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  1. 6
    To meet and seduce (someone) for romantic purposes, especially in a social situation; to pick up. British, Ireland, Polari, informal, transitive

    "Derek Jarman had also publicly identified himself as HIV-positive, while at the same time celebrating what the mainstream press saw and criticized as a promiscuous irresponsibility in blagging trade on Hampstead Heath, an infamous (and very popular) gay cruising ground in North London."

  2. 7
    To speak persuasively or with guile to obtain something. British, Ireland, informal, intransitive

    "Some of my readers will undoubtedly call in question the veracity of what follows, and brand it with the title which is commonly called blagging still. This appellation cannot debilitate its sincerity; […]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    Not genuine; fake. British, Ireland, informal

    "You’re wearing a blag designer shirt!"

Synonyms

All synonyms
begbumcadgeinveigleleechmooch

Example

More examples

"Cheryl loves to blag about how important she is at work."

Etymology

Etymology 1

The origin of the noun is unknown. The verb is derived from the noun.

Etymology 2

The origin of the verb is uncertain; it is possibly: * from blag (“to rob; to steal”) (see etymology 1); or * borrowed from French blaguer (“to joke (about); to tell a lie”), from blague (“pouch, especially for tobacco; joke (from the notion of something puffed up, and thus fanciful)”) (from Dutch balg (“leather bag”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ- (“to swell”)) + -er (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs). The adjective and noun are probably derived from the verb.

Etymology 3

Coined by the American author, cartoonist, and engineer Randall Munroe (born 1984) in his webcomic xkcd in 2006: see the quotation.

Related phrases

pick up

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.