blep
/blɛp/verb, noun
blep is a verb meaning “To extend the tongue beyond the lips, seemingly for no reason, without opening the mouth fully” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-L-E-P, and it appears about once in every 36 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does blep mean?
verb
- 1
To extend the tongue beyond the lips, seemingly for no reason, without opening the mouth fully.
noun
- 1
The act of extending the tongue beyond the lips without opening the mouth fully.
We found out why cats do this and collated some of our favorite blep moments.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce blep?
- /blɛp/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-blep.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-NaomiAmethyst-blep.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of blep
- bleps present, singular, he/she/it, plural
- blepping participle, present
- blepped participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is blep?
Blep appears about once in every 36 million words in written English, the 184,844th 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).
Where does blep come from?
Imitative.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).