blame
English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Middle English, from Old French blasme
Noun
blame (uncountable)
- Censure.
- Blame came from all directions.
- Culpability for something negative or undesirable.
- The blame for starting the fire lies with the arsonist.
- Responsibility for something meriting censure.
- They accepted the blame, but it was an accident.
Derived terms
Translations
censure — see censure
culpability — see culpability
responsibility — see responsibility
state of having caused a bad event
Etymology 2
Middle English, from Old French blasmer, from Late Latin blasphēmō (“to reproach, to revile”). Compare blaspheme
Verb
blame (third-person singular simple present blames, present participle blaming, simple past and past participle blamed)
- To censure (someone or something); to criticize.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ii:
- though my loue be not so lewdly bent, / As those ye blame, yet may it nought appease / My raging smart [...].
- 1871–72, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 1
- These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighboring 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 2007, p. 106:
- I covered the serious programmes too, and indeed, right from the start, I spent more time praising than blaming.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ii:
- (obsolete) To bring into disrepute.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:
- For knighthoods loue, do not so foule a deed, / Ne blame your honour with so shamefull vaunt / Of vile reuenge.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:
- (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 arsonist was blamed for the fire.
Synonyms
- (censure; criticize): reproach, take to task, upbraid
- (consider that someone is the cause of something negative): hold to account
Derived terms
Translations
place blame upon
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