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The village of Blarney in County Cork, Ireland, is home to Blarney Castle, and in the southern wall of that edifice lies the famous Blarney Stone. Legend has it that anyone who kisses the Blarney Stone will gain the gift of skillful flattery, but that gift must be attained at the price of some limber maneuvering—you have to lie down and hang your head over a precipice to reach and kiss the stone. One story claims the word blarney gained popularity as a word for “flattery” after Queen Elizabeth I of England used it to describe the flowery (but apparently less than honest) cajolery of McCarthy Mor, who was then the lord of Blarney Castle.
Examples of blarney in a Sentence
Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 8 Apr. 2025
Dinner, blarney and shenanigans with music and entertainment from Todd Menton (founder of Boiled in Lead), Peter Guertin, The O’Shea Irish Dancers and Katie McMahon (voice of River Dance).
—Kristi Miller, Twin Cities, 15 Mar. 2025
Some tales are blarney.
—Kevin Fisher-Paulson, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Mar. 2023
To many would-be publishers, the title sounded like a bunch of blarney — even in the early 1990s, many people still considered Ireland a conservative backwater and a cultural appendage to Britain.
—Clay Risen, New York Times, 30 Oct. 2022
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Cite this Entry
“Blarney.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blarney. Accessed 12 Mar. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
from the Blarney stone, a stone in the wall of Blarney Castle, Ireland, said to give skill in flattery to those who kiss it
