blithe
Americanadjective
adjective
-
very happy or cheerful
-
heedless; casual and indifferent
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of blithe
First recorded before 1000; Middle English; Old English blīthe; cognate with Old Norse blīthr, Old High German blīdi, Gothic bleiths
Explanation
The adjective blithe used to mean happy and carefree, but over time it has also come to describe someone who isn't paying attention the way they should. If you have a blithe disregard for authority, you might just smile vaguely when a teacher is yelling at you and continue writing on the lockers with a Sharpie. If you're dancing to music while driving, and pass blithely through a red light, chances are you will be pulled over and given either a ticket or a lecture.
Vocabulary lists containing blithe
100 SAT Words Beginning with "B"
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A Christmas Carol
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"Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
That may give these companies an extra temporary boost, but consumers might not be so blithe, Malek warns.
From Barron's ● Apr. 27, 2026
On being asked by a pious official if he really knew God’s judgment, he is said to have responded, “He will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 1, 2026
Even on death row, he retained his aura of blithe unconcern.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2024
Throughout the history of American music, blues, jazz and soul singers have used the jazzy quaver for the subtlest nuances of emotion: for tension, playfulness, defiance, flirtatiousness, ache or just blithe ornamentation.
From New York Times ● May 10, 2024
As they came up into the May morning he hopped over the ditch and skipped into the long grass as blithe as a squirrel.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
What kind of toxic passive-aggressive blither is that?
From Time ● Mar. 1, 2014
As for his poetic effusions and snatches of writing, they are mostly fey blither.
From Time Magazine Archive
Lady Mary is, blithe and blither, on her way.
From Time Magazine Archive
“The gladsome lark o’er moor and fell, The lintie in the bosky dell, No blither than your bonnie sel’, My ain, my artless Mary.”
From Aileen Aroon, A Memoir With other Tales of Faithful Friends and Favourites by Gordon Stables
"Well," says Frithiof, "now is the time to show ourselves to be men of avail, though blither tide it was at Baldur's Meadows."
From The Story Of Frithiof The Bold 1875 by William Morris
Ms. Bouder, now often so mannered in ballets by George Balanchine, was at her freest and blithest.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2018
If you are late for “Amy,” a new documentary about Amy Winehouse, you will miss her at her blithest.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 1, 2015
Though its social scope is narrower than Hardy’s, you do come away from it with a true sense of the shrouded world that he devised, where fate could frown upon even the blithest day.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 27, 2015
The blithest of the war-inspired songs, now up among the bestsellers.
From Time Magazine Archive
You were kind—over-lenient, 'twas rumor'd, to rule— And so learn'd, though the blithest of all in the school, 'Twas your pupil's own fault if he left you a fool, My jolly old classical master.
From Sonnets and Other Verse by W. M. MacKeracher
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
