Blate
adj, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Archaic form of bleat. alt-of, archaic
"Away they fly, like a party of Indians after buffaloes; while along the road, it may be, cattle are bellowing, sheep blating, dogs barking, hens cackling, and crows cawing."
- 2 cry plaintively wordnet
- 1 Bashful, sheepish. Northern-England, Scotland
"You'd say Not them; fine legs, and Ma struggling into her blouse would say You're no blate. Who told you they're fine?"
- 2 Dull, stupid. Northern-England, Scotland
- 1 disposed to avoid notice wordnet
Example
More examples"You'd say Not them; fine legs, and Ma struggling into her blouse would say You're no blate. Who told you they're fine?"
Etymology
Borrowed from Scots blate (“timid, sheepish”), apparently a conflation of: * Northern Middle English *blate, *blait (“pale, ghastly, terrified”), from Old English blāt (“pale, livid, ghastly”), from Proto-West Germanic *blait (“pale, discoloured”), from Proto-Germanic *blaitaz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyd- (“pale, pallid”); * Middle English bleth, bleath (“timid, soft”), from Old English blēaþ (“gentle, shy, cowardly, timid; slothful, inactive, effeminate”), from Proto-Germanic *blauþuz (“weak, timid, void, naked”). Cognate with German blassen (“to make pale”), bleich (“pale, pallid”). More at bleak, bleach.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.