Glib
adj, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A person's mouth or tongue. UK, obsolete, slang
""Well, Sal, you mum your dubber pretty generally, but when you do slacken your glib you may as well do it civilly.""
- 2 A mass of matted hair worn down over the eyes, formerly common in Ireland. historical
"Whom when she saw in wretched weedes disguiz'd, / With heary glib deform'd and meiger face, / Like ghost late risen from his grave agryz'd, / She knew him not […]"
- 1 To make smooth or slippery. transitive
"1628, Joseph Hal, “Christian Liberty Laid Forth,” in The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Joseph Hall, D.D., Volume V, London: Williams & Smith, 1808, p. 366, https://books.google.ca/books?id=8iUBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false There is a drunken liberty of the Tongue; which, being once glibbed with intoxicating liquor, runs wild through heaven and earth; and spares neither him that is God above, nor those which are called gods on earth."
- 2 To castrate; to geld; to emasculate. obsolete
"Fourteen they shall not see To bring false generations. They are co-heirs; And I had rather glib myself than they Should not produce fair issue."
- 1 Having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.
"A much more thorough examination of this period is essential, and no glib answers should be accepted as good coin."
- 2 Smooth or slippery. dated
"a sheet of glib ice"
- 3 Artfully persuasive but insincere in nature; smooth-talking, honey-tongued, silver-tongued.
"a glib tongue; a glib speech"
- 4 Snarky or unserious in a disrespectful way.
"Its style is both open and arch, never verging on glib camp but always a little removed, reducing large emotions to small observations and thereby making them all the more effective."
- 1 artfully persuasive in speech wordnet
- 2 having only superficial plausibility wordnet
- 3 marked by lack of intellectual depth wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"He may come across as glib, but he knows what he's talking about."
Etymology
A shortening of either English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).
From Irish glib.
Compare Old English and dialectal English lib (“to castrate, geld”), dialectal Danish live, Low German and Old Dutch lubben.