Blinged

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Ornamented with striking jewels or fashionable items that signify affluence or trendiness
2. Adorned with shiny or ostentatious items that show wealth or style
3. Embellished using sparkling or attention-grabbing decorations to appear lavish

Etymology: "Blinged" is simply the past-tense and past-participle form of the verb "bling," with the regular "-ed" ending added, and it is used here as an adjective meaning decorated with shiny items. The verb "bling" itself is the more interesting part of the story: it is a slang word of recent coinage, built from the imitative sound of light flashing off gold and jewels, and it spread widely through American hip-hop culture in the late 1990s before moving into general English. Because "blinged" is a straightforward combination of an existing word and a common ending, its history is essentially the history of "bling." Once that verb was established, speakers could treat it like any other regular verb, so "blinged" needed no separate invention to appear. It describes a thing or person that has been dressed up in glittering ornament, such as a blinged-out car or a phone case covered in rhinestones.

Synonyms: decorated, embellished, ornamented, adorned

Antonyms: plain, simple, unadorned, bare