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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"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:
Morgan was blithe about the impact of endorsements.
From Slate ● Aug. 25, 2026
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
As Gelman observes, the problem with this approach as policy “is not just the innumeracy, it’s the blithe disregard for it, the idea that being off by multiple orders of magnitude ... just doesn’t matter.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 19, 2025
He couldn’t stand such blithe defiance of petty laws.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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
I ha' suffered it these thirty years and more, and 'tain't worth while, for the few years that's left, makin' a blub and a blither about it.
From Checkmate by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
No lad could have spoken with a blither face, for Moor had preserved much of the boy in spite of his thirty years.
From Moods by Louisa May Alcott
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
Ted, who had always been the blithest brother, and the least intellectual or introspective, could now be morose at times.
From Time Magazine Archive
It's making an old woman of her since she's come of an age to think; and she the merriest, blithest creature that ever was.
From The Mermaid A Love Tale by Lily Dougall
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.
