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Blarney   Listen
Blarney

noun
1.
Flattery designed to gain favor.  Synonyms: coaxing, soft soap, sweet talk.



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"Blarney" Quotes from Famous Books



... all blowzed, in spirits, and bawling for fair play, fair play, with a voice that might deafen a ballad singer, when confusion on confusion, who should enter the room but our two great acquaintances from town, Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilelmina Amelia Skeggs! Description would but beggar, therefore it is unnecessary to describe this new mortification. Death! To be seen by ladies of such high breeding in such vulgar attitudes! Nothing better ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... anything except that you're an incorrigible Celt. When you stooped down to kiss the stone at Blarney Castle, you lost your balance and fell in the well. And you've ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... took her stand in the doorway of the hut, and stretched out her fist in a very Amazonian attitude, "Nobody," quoth she, "shall drive me out of this house, till my praties are out of the ground." Then would she wheedle and laugh and blarney, beginning in a rage, and ending as if she had been in jest. Meanwhile her husband stood by very quiet, occasionally trying to still her; but it is to be presumed, that, after our departure, they came to blows, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... typical Washington lobbyist. Before his death, while touring with Jefferson as Sir Lucius O'Trigger in "The Rivals," he renewed his earlier triumphs in Irish character, but, even here the accents of the oily Bardwell gave an additional touch of blarney ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... proved to be possessed of the loyalty and shrewdness of the Yankee, together with a touch of the blarney of the genuine Irishman. He listened to the complaints of the mutineers, sympathized with their grievances, entered heartily into their plans, and by his apparent interest in the conspiracy soon became looked upon as one ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... blarney caught him, but anyway Lory buried his muzzle in Jack's pail till he could see nothin' but what Jack said it held, and took the bay at six hundred dollars just ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... the silence. "Sure, it's very well for the gentleman it's in the family," he said dryly. "Tail up, tail down, 's all one among friends. But if he'll be so quick with his tongue in Tralee Market, he'll chance on one here and there that he'll not blarney ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... doise. Oi'll teek up me risidince at Dublin. Oi'll show ye Oircland—free— troiumphint, shuprame among the neetions. Oi'll show ye our noble pisintry, the foinist in the wurruld. Oi'll take ye to the Rotondo. Oi'll show ye the Blarney-stone. Oi'll show ye the ruins of Tara, where me oun ancisthors ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... hould up your head, Ye're now a jintleman, Sir; For in history and geography I've taught you all I can, Sir. And if any one should ask you now, Where you got all your knowledge, Jist tell them 'twas from Paddy Blake, Of Bally Blarney College." ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... set phrases about the goodness of Providence, and arranged at the same time sundry fine speeches to make to the bride; so that the old lady's piety and flattery ran a strange couple together along with herself; while mixed up with her prayers and her blarney, were certain speculations about Jack Dwyer—as to how long he could live—and ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... red-white-and-red bows, who waved them, in as they came, and unconsciously squinted and made faces at them in the intense sunlight. It tells how the maidens gave them dainties and sweet glances, and boutonnieres of tuberoses and violets, and bloodthirsty adjurations, and blarney for blarney; gave them seven wild well-believed rumors for as many impromptu canards, and in their soft plantation drawl asked which was the one paramount "ladies' man," and were assured by every lad of the hundred that ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... trident trailed upon the ground. "It's serious or nothing with me, I guess. And she's got something against me. I don't know what. Thinks I don't blarney the Kanakas enough, perhaps. Then ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... you on your return from Ireland, which ought to be ashamed to see you, after her Brunswick blarney. I am of Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate the Bermuda claim. Why should you throw away the two thousand pounds (of the non-guinea Murray) upon that cursed piece of treacherous ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... "Oh, blarney! That's what it is to have a mick ancestry. I suppose I'll have to own up that if I didn't like you to ride with me I wouldn't let you ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... of all infantry divisions. We may be, for aught you know, Mrs. Ellis incog., warning the mothers of America, as of yore the Cornelias of England. What is the Nursery Blarney-Stone? You have none in your own airy and southern-exposed first-pair-back, (Nov-Anglice>, "the keeping-room chamber,") where you daily water and rake your young olive-sprouts? upon your word of honor, Madam, you have not? You never tell nursery-tales of ghosts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... visitors; from parsons begging subscriptions to new organs; from fashionable ladies asking Pete to open bazaars; from preachers inviting him to anniversary tea-meetings, and saying Methodism was proud of him. If anybody wanted money, he kissed the Blarney Stone and applied to Pete. Kate stood between him and the worst of the leeches. The best of them he contrived to deal with himself, secretly and surreptitiously. Sometimes there came acknowledgments of charities of which Kate knew nothing. Then he would shuffle them away and she would ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... of Ireland do you come?" laughed the girl. She seemed somewhat embarrassed by her mother's open admiration. "Well, setting all blarney aside, such will be the head-lines. And when the last clue is exhausted, and my press-agent is the same, I come back to appear in a new play, a well-known actress. Of such flippant things is ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... and raised her head. All her share of the blarney of Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... "Away with your blarney, boy!" laughed the Violet, in return, using her Maggie Murphy form of speech with telling effect, as she often did. "He left a thousand apologies for you," she added, slipping back into her veneer of the—for Maggie—upper world. "And you've ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... puppy! Pretended to own a corner-house on the Twenty-fifth Avenue, and wanted to know how I should like it? Like it? I should like to see him in Sing-Sing! He own a house?—a brass foundry more like, and that in his face! Keep a sharp eye on BLUSTER and his blarney. He's what our neighbor GINGER calls a "beat," whatever that is—a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various

... indefatigable dancer, and a good fiddler. Besides, he had already accustomed himself to the Mexican manners and language, and in a horse or buffalo hunt none were more successful. He would tell long stories to the old women about the wonders of Erin, the miracles of St. Patrick, and about the stone at Blarney. In fact, he was a favourite with every one, and would have become rich and happy, could he have settled. Unfortunately for him, his wild spirit of adventure did not allow him to enjoy the quiet of a Montereyan life, and hearing that there was a perspective of getting his ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... over, and there was nothing more of a startling nature to see. He had watched them check babies at the children's building as if they were poodles or handbags, and he had been over to the Irish village and seen the people kissing the "Blarney Stone." On a card tacked near by ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... published "Reminiscences of Irving" have told, as well as it ever can be told, the history of the Lyceum Theater under Irving's direction, was as good a servant in the front of the theater as Loveday was on the stage. Like a true Irishman, he has given me some lovely blarney in his book. He has also told all the stories that I might have told, and described every one connected with the Lyceum except himself. I can fill that deficiency to a certain extent by saying that he ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... then world ... first time I had ever heard the lying scoundrel speak.... Demosthenes of blarney ... the big beggar-man who had L15,000 a year, and, proh pudor! the favour of English ministers instead ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... married to one of them. Any one who has been in Cork and heard the fine old Irishman say in his musical and inimitable voice, "Tis a lovely dye," such a one will ever after have a snug place in his affections for the Irish, whether he has kissed the "Blarney stone" or not. If he has heard this same driver of a jaunting-car rhapsodize about "Shandon Bells" and the author, Father Prout, his admiration for things and people Irish will become well-nigh a passion. He will ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... another old friend. Bill Daugherty was there keeping the station. Nothing would do him but I should stay over there a week or so. Daugherty was a natural born Irishman who had "kissed the Blarney stone," full of wit and humor. He went to the coach and took my "grip sack" off and took it to the house, and said I had to stay. I liked that first rate, but I did ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... not anything he says, It's just his presence and his smile, The blarney of his silences ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... once more the rich Irish brogue which gave character and emphasis to all he said, a naughty character and a most unpleasant emphasis sometimes, I must admit, fully appreciated by any who chanced to displease him, but to me always as sweet and pleasant as the zephyrs blowing from "the groves of Blarney." Peter was an Alabama soldier. On the first day of my installation as matron of Buckner Hospital, located then at Gainesville, Alabama, after the battle of Shiloh, I found him lying in one of the wards badly wounded, and suffering, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... Nights, I found out that Oriental tales have no morals," dryly observed Mr. Rose. "A man who had been brought up with the Blarney Stone for a teething-ring once sold me an unexpurgated edition de luxe, with illustrations, so ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... strutted about, assuring him that this disgraceful uproar was quite uncalled for, and finally putting on a severe look, told him that he could not have anything for his improvements; of course not,— he really could not expect; certainly not, &c. Smith plainly assured the agent that his "blarney" would avail him nothing; he had come by their own appointment to get his pay, and that he certainly should have—if not in the way they themselves agreed upon, he would choose his own method of getting ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... sober you scintillate, But when you're in drink you're the pride of the intellect; Divil a one of us ever came in till late, Once at the bar where you happened to be— Every eye there like a spoke in you centering, You with your eloquence, blarney, and bantering— All Vagabondia shouts at your entering, King of the Tenderloin, Barney McGee! There's no satiety In your society With the variety Of your esprit. Here's a long purse to you, And a great thirst to you! Fate be no ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... first landing; New York the second landing. So I say Hail! Hail! to both celebrations, for one day, anyhow, could not do justice to such a subject; and I only wish I could have kissed the blarney stone of America, which is Plymouth Rock, so that I might have done justice to this subject. Ah, gentlemen, that Mayflower was the ark that floated the deluge of oppression, and Plymouth Rock was the Ararat ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking wooden Donald, the figure-head on ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... teeth with rage, for I had not forgotten how he treated me before; but he came up to me in so kind a manner, and inquired so affectionately after my health, and seemed to feel such a real interest in me, that I swallowed all his blarney and coaxing, and at last agreed to stop with him again for the night that I would be in the city, intending, the moment that we should be paid off next day, to steer straight for my old mother, if, mayhap, my cruelty had not broken her heart; ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... move toward the door because her skirts were held fast. "If you go now I shall cry my eyes out all night," Polly protested in a tone that was almost convincing. "It was horrid of me, darling, to tell you the truth and me Irish and believin' in the blarney stone," she apologized in her Pollyesque fashion. "Please never, never tell me the truth about myself and have anybody in your club you like. Only if you expect to have twelve girls who exactly agree you will have to leave both you and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... "I believe that you are trying to blarney us with your jargon. Zounds! let yourself be hung, and don't kick up such a row ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... to touch a cent of that money, in the first place. I was a fool to listen to your blarney, Rackliff. Just because I was idiot enough to believe in you, I made myself a thief and a liar. Oh, I've been punished for it, all right. Never knew I had a conscience that could make me squirm so much. Some nights ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... bin sayin' somethin' about it now an' again, but he's such a man for blarney that I never belave more ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... responded thoughtfully; "the list is not a long one. Limerick and Carrickmacross for lace, Shandon for the bells, Blarney and Donnybrook for the stone and the fair, Kilkenny for the cats, and Balbriggan for ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... any honest man believe that this same man, captain Johnson, who had been, as Paddy says, "sticking the blarney into me at that rate," could have been such a scoundrel as to turn about the very next minute, and try all in his power to trick me out of my vagrants. It is, however, too true to be doubted; for having purposely delayed ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney; and Knight of the most stinging Order ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Blarney" :   soft-soap, persuade, flattery, browbeat, swagger, coax, bully



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