blame
/bleɪm/noun, verb, adjective
blame is spelled B-L-A-M-E. The wrong spelling people search most is blaim: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 55 of all searches for the word. Blame is a noun meaning “Censure”.
How many letters and syllables are in blame?
| Letters | 5: B-L-A-M-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 43 times per million words; the 2,339th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, blaim, about 30 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell blame?
Blame is spelled B-L-A-M-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 55 of the searches for blame in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is blame?
Blame appears 43 times per million words in written English, the 2,339th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce blame?
- /bleɪm/
Blame has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-blame.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Back_ache-blame.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with blame?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as blame.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: melba, amble.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of blame
- blames present, singular, he/she/it
- blaming participle, present
- blamed participle, past, singular, he/she/it, plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does blame mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Censure.
Blame came from all directions.
- 2
Culpability for something negative or undesirable.
The blame for starting the fire lies with the arsonist.
- 3
Responsibility for something meriting censure.
They accepted the blame, but it was an accident.
- 4
A source control feature that can show which user was responsible for a particular portion of the source code.
verb
- 1
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 student driver was blamed for the accident.
- 2
To assert the cause of some bad event.
We blamed the accident on the student driver.
- 3
To censure (someone or something); to criticize.
- 4
obsoleteTo bring into disrepute.
adjective
- 1
euphemism of damn (intensifier)
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Blame in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | coupabilité, blâme , reprocher, blâmer |
| German | Schuld , beschuldigen, verantwortlich machen |
| Portuguese | culpa , culpar |
| Spanish | culpa , culpar, culpabilizar, echar la culpa, inculpar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does blame come from?
From Middle English blame, borrowed from Old French blame, blasme, produced from the verb blasmer, which in turn is derived from Late Latin blastēmāre, variant of blasphēmāre, from Ancient Greek βλασφημέω (blasphēméō). Doublet of blaspheme. Displaced native Old English tǣling (“blame”) and tǣlan (“to blame”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).