blurt
Americanverb (used with object)
-
blurts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
blurted,
past participle, past
-
blurting
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
blurtsimple
-
blurtssimple
-
have blurtedperfect
-
has blurtedperfect
-
am blurtingprogressive
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are blurtingprogressive
-
is blurtingprogressive
-
have been blurtingperfect progressive
-
has been blurtingperfect progressive
Past
-
blurtedsimple
-
had blurtedperfect
-
was blurtingprogressive
-
were blurtingprogressive
-
had been blurtingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of blurt
First recorded in 1565–75; apparently imitative
Explanation
If you blurt something out, you're speaking abruptly and without thinking about what you're saying. Usually, when you blurt something, you end up regretting it. Saying something without considering your words can end up making you feel stupid or hurting someone's feelings — just imagine what might happen if you were to blurt out what you really think about your grandmother's cooking. The best thing about the word blurt is that it's onomatopoeic, or a word that sounds exactly like what it means.
Vocabulary lists containing blurt
Instead of "Said": Vexed Verbiage to Express Anger
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List 6
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "B"
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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:
They stopped calling on Najya in class, making her “so frustrated that, waving her hand furiously, she began to blurt out the answers.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
Cole is a former cop who feels guilty about his father’s death, a backstory as lackluster as the exposition dumps that blurt it out.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
I was just like, trying not to be a stuttering idiot, trying not to blurt out, “I love ‘Pretty Woman’!”
From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2025
"If I see something on Instagram I'm not going to tell someone or blurt it out to the team because they don't want to see it. I think it's a personal preference."
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2025
Emma wanted to blurt out, Natalie, can’t you say something else?
From "The Strangers" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
What goes down: He accidentally blurts out an inappropriate word that shocks his older co-workers, who don’t understand that the word is often used as a compliment among young people.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
One more brief, explosive interlude later, Ilya blurts out Shane’s name, and for the first time in all the years they’ve circled each other.
From Salon ● Dec. 26, 2025
When the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” blurts out that the emperor is naked, he says what people already knew.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 2, 2025
When the woman at the agency reveals that all mortgage-backed bonds get AAA ratings, she blurts out that if she doesn’t give the banks the ratings they want, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 11, 2025
“You say don’t feel sorry for you, but then you tell a story about the base of the toilet,” she blurts.
From "We Were Liars" by E. Lockhart
After seeing it, she says, she ran into Chin and blurted out, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
That this didn’t happen has sparked a back-and-forth about culpability, with Deadline reporting BAFTA’s assurance that it made the BBC and the broadcast’s producers aware that the slur was audible shortly after Davidson blurted it.
From Salon ● Mar. 1, 2026
Soon after, the star blurted out cooler gas measuring a temperature of 10,000 Kelvin moving super-slow at 70 kilometres per second.
From Space Scoop ● Nov. 19, 2025
“Why does it smell like pancakes in here?” a shopper blurted out from an adjoining changing room at Zara.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2025
“Is that the missing money?” he blurted out.
From "Trouble at the Arcade (The Hardy Boys: Secret Files, #1)" by Franklin W. Dixon
When asked whether that makes him an anomaly in the Villages, he barely waits for the end of the question before resolutely blurting out his answer.
From BBC ● May 1, 2026
That might look like blurting things out or firing off a text that should be slept on.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
“It is almost fun sometimes to just go to that lazy part of your brain where you’re just blurting out whatever stupid thought comes out,” says Mike Judge, who created the duo and voices them.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 26, 2023
“This place looks like Seoul from the 1970s,” I remember blurting out in the car.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2022
He kept moving impatiently in his chair, as if he had something enormous to impart to them and not blurting it out immediately was a physical strain.
From "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman
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.
