Flashy! Ostentatious!! Bedazzled!!! Sure is, this blinged-out array of ladies handbags. Whether it be festooning mobile phones or tooth caps, chunky necklaces or these fashion accessories for the lady who ain’t quite the wall flower, bling bling seems always to be in…
Linguistically, bling is an “ideophone” which intends to evoke the “sound” of light hitting silver, platinum, or diamonds. It is not an onomatopoeia or a word that phonetically imitates the source of the sound that it describes (oink goes the little piggie, meow the cat, roar, chirp, bang, crash – you get the idea).
Ideophones evoke sensory events – with bling its what our eyes would perceive as light strikes metal, jewels and precious stones. Kinda like these bags, non?
The crossover from hip-hop heroes to mainstream was complete when the word itself earned a place in the Oxford English Dictionary back in 2003.
Outside the dust jacket of the dictionary, bling has a broader definition. It is a set of values that encompasses playing hard, looking good and lapping up the finest – the Bentley, the Jacuzzi, bottles of Grug, the fur coat, the first class ticket, the Manolos, the Prada, the Rolex.
Just witness 50 Cent’s album title: Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Says it all, really.
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