blimey

«blimey» in Mova's school dictionary: a cry of surprise, shock or amazement, like «wow!» or… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

interjection (blimey; also cor blimey, gor blimey)

meaning for a pupil

1) (UK, informal) a cry of surprise, shock or amazement, like «wow!» or «goodness!». tree →

2) (euphemism, origin) a softened form of the old oath «God blind me». tree →

sense in the lessons

Very common in British speech, old-fashioned but friendly; heard in films, comics and from grandparents; mild, not rude; a way to swear without swearing. UK, Ireland, Australia.

examples

• Blimey, look at the size of that dog! tree →
• Blimey, is that the time already? tree →
• «It costs how much? Blimey!» tree →
• Cor blimey, it's freezing out there. tree →
• Blimey, Charlie, you've grown! tree →
• The answer was 1,000? Blimey, I wrote 100. tree →
• Blimey O'Reilly, what a mess! tree →

note

Mild and safe in most places, even with children. Nobody hears the old «God blind me» in it any more. It sounds very British; in the USA it sounds like an English film character.

In the corpora

• Others, like "blimey" and "strewth", were once oaths about God that have worn soft with time.
• "Blimey!" is a British cry of surprise that comes from the old oath "God blind me".

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «blimey» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.