Glib

//ɡlɪb// adj, noun, verb, slang

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 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. 2
    Smooth or slippery. dated

    "a sheet of glib ice"

  3. 3
    Artfully persuasive but insincere in nature; smooth-talking, honey-tongued, silver-tongued.

    "a glib tongue; a glib speech"

  4. 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."

Adjective
  1. 1
    artfully persuasive in speech wordnet
  2. 2
    having only superficial plausibility wordnet
  3. 3
    marked by lack of intellectual depth wordnet
Noun
  1. 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. 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 […]"

Verb
  1. 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. 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."

Etymology

Etymology 1

A shortening of either English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).

Etymology 2

A shortening of either English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).

Etymology 3

A shortening of either English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).

Etymology 4

From Irish glib.

Etymology 5

Compare Old English and dialectal English lib (“to castrate, geld”), dialectal Danish live, Low German and Old Dutch lubben.

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