What does blatant mean?
Blatant is an adjective describing something unpleasant that is completely obvious and deliberately unconcealed. A blatant lie, a blatant error, or a blatant disregard for the rules is one committed openly, without any attempt to hide it, and often with an air of shamelessness. The word carries strong disapproval: it implies not merely visibility but audacity, suggesting the person responsible does not even care about being seen. In modern usage it almost always modifies negative things — deception, bias, manipulation, negligence — and rarely appears in praise. Its older sense of 'noisy or clamorous', which the poet John Milton had in mind when he coined the word from Latin in the seventeenth century, has all but disappeared. Common collocations include 'a blatant lie' and 'a blatant disregard for'. Related forms are the adverb 'blatantly' and the noun 'blatancy'.
adjective(Of bad behaviour or something undesirable) completely obvious and unconcealed; done openly and unashamedly. It can also mean loudly clamorous or offensively noisy, though this older sense is now rare.
- (Of something bad) completely obvious, open, and unconcealed; brazenly evident.
- (Now rare) Noisy or clamorous; making an offensive uproar.
"The referee's blatant favouritism toward the home team drew boos from both sets of supporters."
"It was a blatant lie, told without a flicker of hesitation."
"The company showed a blatant disregard for basic safety regulations."
'Blatant' was essentially invented by John Milton in the 1600s — he built it from a Latin verb meaning 'to babble' to describe a howling, noisy mob, and only later did it come to mean shamelessly obvious.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of blatant
Blatant was coined by the English poet John Milton in his 1649 pamphlet Eikonoklastes, where he used it of a noisy crowd. He derived it from the Latin verb blatire, meaning to babble, chatter, or make a bleating noise — a word attested in late Latin. Because the word began life describing clamorous noise, its early senses centred on loudness; over the following centuries the emphasis shifted to shameless conspicuousness, giving the dominant modern meaning of open, unconcealed badness. The Latin root also yields the rarer derivative 'blatteration'.
Related word forms
How blatant is actually used
Almost always derogatory or at least disapproving — it attaches to lies, hypocrisy, corruption, and other faults, not to admirable openness. The original Miltonic sense of 'loudly clamorous' survives only in historical or literary contexts.
Easily confused with blatant
Both mean glaringly obvious wrongdoing, but 'flagrant' emphasizes the shocking or scandalous nature of the act, while 'blatant' emphasizes that it is open and unconcealed.