blame

• enPR: blām, IPA^(key): /bleɪm/

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• Rhymes: -eɪm

From Middle English blame, borrowed from Old French blame, blasme, produced from the verb blasmer, which in turn is derived from Late Latin blastēmāre, variant of blasphēmāre, from Ancient Greek βλασφημέω (blasphēméō). Doublet of blaspheme. Displaced native Old English tǣling (“blame”) and tǣlan (“to blame”).

blame (uncountable)

1. Censure.

   Blame came from all directions.

2. Culpability for something negative or undesirable.

   The blame for starting the fire lies with the arsonist.

3. Responsibility for something meriting censure.

   They accepted the blame, but it was an accident.

4. (computing) A source control feature that can show which user was responsible for a particular portion of the source code.

• fault

From Middle English blamen, borrowed from Old French blasmer, from Late Latin blasphēmāre (“to reproach, to revile”), from Ancient Greek βλασφημέω (blasphēméō). Compare blaspheme, a doublet. Overtook common use from the native wite (“to blame, accuse, reproach, suspect”) (from Middle English wīten, from Old English wītan).

blame (third-person singular simple present blames, present participle blaming, simple past and past participle blamed)

1. To censure (someone or something); to criticize.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     though my loue be not so lewdly bent, / As those ye blame, yet may it nought appease / My raging smart [...].

   • 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter I, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 8:

     These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighbouring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his nieces.

   • 1919, Saki, ‘The Oversight’, The Toys of Peace:

     That was the year that Sir Richard was writing his volume on Domestic Life in Tartary. The critics all blamed it for a lack of concentration.

   • 2006, Clive James, North Face of Soho, Picador, published 2007, page 106:

     I covered the serious programmes too, and indeed, right from the start, I spent more time praising than blaming.

2. (obsolete) To bring into disrepute.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     For knighthoods loue, do not so foule a deed, / Ne blame your honour with so shamefull vaunt / Of vile reuenge.

3. (transitive, usually followed by "for") To assert or consider that someone is the cause of something negative; to place blame, to attribute responsibility (for something negative or for doing something negative).

   The student driver was blamed for the accident.

   After what happened at the wedding, I wouldn't blame you if you never spoke to them again.

4. (transitive, with "on") To assert the cause of some bad event.

   We blamed the accident on the student driver.

• (censure; criticize): reproach, shend, take to task, upbraid
• (consider that someone is the cause of something negative): hold to account

blame (not comparable)

1. euphemism of damn (intensifier)
   • 1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous:

     "He yarns good," said Tom Platt. "T'other night he told us abaout a kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four ponies up an' down Toledo, Ohio, I think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o' sim'lar kids. Cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. He knows scores of 'em."

   • 1923 October, Robert Frost, “[Notes.] The Star-splitter.”, in New Hampshire […], New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →OCLC, page 27:

     “What do you want with one of those blame things?” / I asked him well beforehand. “Don’t you get one!”

• Amble, Embla, Lambe, Mabel, Mable, Melba, amble, belam, melba

From Old French blasme, a deverbal noun from blasmer (“to criticise”).

• blam (rare)

• IPA^(key): /ˈblaːm(ə)/

blame (uncountable)

1. criticism, condemnation
2. accusation (especially legal)
3. blame, culpability
4. offence, misdeed
5. imperfection, downside
6. disrepute, dishonour
7. blasphemy, irreverence

• English: blame
• Scots: blame

• “blāme, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

blame

1. Alternative form of blamen

• IPA^(key): /blam/

blame f (plural blames)

1. flame

   Synonym: flame