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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

glib.

Having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ɡlɪb/

  1. Having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.

    glib answers

  2. Smooth or slippery.

    archaic
    a sheet of glib ice

  3. Artfully persuasive but insincere in nature; smooth-talking, honey-tongued, silver-tongued.

    a glib tongue
    a glib speech

  4. Snarky or unserious in a disrespectful way.

Where this word comes from

A shortening of either obsolete English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).

verb/ɡlɪb/

  1. To make smooth or slippery.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

A shortening of either obsolete English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).

noun/ɡlɪb/

  1. A person's mouth or tongue.

    UK · obsolete · slang
Where this word comes from

A shortening of either obsolete English glibbery (“slippery”) or its source, Low German glibberig, glibberich (“slippery”) / Dutch glibberig (“slippery”).

noun/ɡlɪb/

  1. A mass of matted hair worn down over the eyes, formerly common in Ireland.

    historical
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Irish glib.

verb/ɡlɪb/

  1. To castrate; to geld; to emasculate.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

Compare Old English and dialectal English lib (“to castrate, geld”), dialectal Danish live, Low German and Old Dutch lubben.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.