释义 |
blurb slang (orig. U.S.).|blɜːb| [See note below.] A brief descriptive paragraph or note of the contents or character of a book, printed as a commendatory advertisement, on the jacket or wrapper of a newly published book. Hence in extended use: a descriptive or commendatory paragraph. Also Comb. Said to have been originated in 1907 by Gelett Burgess in a comic book jacket embellished with a drawing of a pulchritudinous young lady whom he facetiously dubbed Miss Blinda Blurb. (D.A.) See Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. I. 329.
1914G. Burgess Burgess Unabridged 7 Blurb, 1. A flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial. 2. Fulsome praise; a sound like a publisher... On the ‘jacket’ of the ‘latest’ fiction, we find the blurb; abounding in agile adjectives and adverbs, attesting that this book is the ‘sensation of the year’. 1918Wine, Women & War (1926) 106 Americans, despite blurb in home press, [have] not yet succeeded in revolutionizing art of war. 1923Nation 1 Aug. 121/2 The publishers..clapped on a jacket containing a blurb. 1924Spectator 27 Sept. 426 The note of vanity is ominously accentuated by the publisher's blurb on the dust⁓cover, as silly and vulgar as the present writer has ever seen. 1926Times Lit. Suppl. 21 Oct. 710/2 The paragraph briefly setting forth the merits of the book (known in ‘the trade’ as a ‘blurb’). 1934A. Huxley Beyond Mexique Bay 2 The blurb-writers promise to take you into the very heart of all these variegated delights. 1947Penguin Music Mag. Sept. 60 The cast, the ‘blurb’ tells us, includes the pick of the younger generation of Italian operatic singers. 1948Ibid. Oct. 22 Her name appeared recently [in concert advertisements] mixed up with a blurb about ‘the greatest living exponent’ and so on. 1955Times 4 Aug. 9/5 For why must publishers prefix to novels of this school a blurb in which much of the substance of the thriller is already revealed? |