英语听力精选进阶版 11236（在线收听）

Bling 

Professor David Crystal 

Bling, bling – it arrived in English in the late 1990s, used 

to describe diamonds and jewellery and all kinds of showy 

clothing, accoutrements …  

Well, it became nationally known in the USA when the 

artist Baby Gangster - Cash Money artist - made a hit hip-hop song called 'Bling Bling'. And it soon arrived in Britain, 

where it was more usually used without the reduplication, 

you know, 'bling', by itself. It was in dictionaries by 2002.  

Well, the sound-symbolic character of the word - glistening 

light reflected by metal - it caught popular attention. The 

Times ran an article on it. It was the title of a novel by 

Erica Kennedy, and its sense began to broaden as people 

began to use the word in new ways. There's a website, 

'Think Bling!' defining it as 'anything shiny and worth a 

good amount of money'. Cars can now be bling.  

And even that definition is passé - a rich meal can be bling. 'Bling 

Breakfast' was the headline of a newspaper article in New York a couple 

of years ago.  

But the word's takeover by the middle-classes has made it worthless to 

the rapping community. My rapping contacts tell me – they'd never use it 

now, except as a joke!