Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
An airship constructed with a nonrigid lifting agent container.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: aeronautics, aerospace, aviation, business, engineering, natural-sciences, physical-sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: barrage balloon, Gossage, nonrigid
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: airship, dirigible
noun
Any large airborne inflatable.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: broadly
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
An obese person.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: slang
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A person similar to the cartoon character Colonel Blimp; a pompous, reactionary British man.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A soundproof cover for a video camera.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: broadcasting, film, media, television
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: barney
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A person considered similar to Colonel Blimp in appearance, thought, or expression, particularly (historical or archaic, derogatory) a reactionary middle-class Englishman during the Interwar Period.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: humorous
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
verb
To expand like a blimp or balloon; to become fat.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: intransitive, slang
Synonyms: blimp out, blimp up
Antonyms: none provided
verb
To fit (a video camera) with a soundproof cover.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: transitive
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
a small nonrigid airship used for observation or as a barrage balloon
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: sausage balloon, sausage
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: airship, dirigible
noun
any elderly pompous reactionary ultranationalistic person (after the cartoon character created by Sir David Low)
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: Colonel Blimp
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: reactionary, ultraconservative, extreme right-winger
History
Origin not entirely certain. However, most historians believe that it is onomatopoeia for the sound a blimp makes when thumped. Although there is some disagreement among historians, credit for coining the term is usually given to Lt. A. D. Cunningham of the British Royal Navy in 1915. There is an often repeated, but false, alternative explanation for the term. The erroneous story is that at some time in the early 20th century, the United States military had two classes for airships: Type A-rigid and Type B-limp, hence “blimp”. In fact, A. D. Topping reports on the “Etymology of ‘Blimp’”, in the AAHS Journal, Winter 1963, that: : “there was no American ‘A-class’ of airships as such—all military aircraft, heavier or lighter-than-air were designated with ‘A’ until the appearance of B-class airships in May 1917. There was an American B airship—but there seems to be no record of any official designation of non-rigids as ‘limp’. Further, according to the Oxford Dictionary, the first appearance of the word in print was in 1916, in England, a year before the first B-class airship.”
From Colonel Blimp, a comic character created by David Low and first appearing in London's Evening Standard in April 1934.
Across languages
43 source translations are retained for this English entry.
