Oftentimes, you hear the word “bling-bling” (usually shortened to “bling”) and yet, you don’t exactly know what it means or why it is called such. “Bling-bling” is a down to earth slang word which means elaborate or extravagant jewelry and other accessories, and also to a standard of living built around unnecessary spending and flamboyance.
Linguistically, “bling” is an ideophone, which conveys a vivid impression of a certain sensation or sensory perception, e.g. smell, color, shape, sound, action, or movement. However, it does not imitate the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as “click,” or animal noises such as “oink” or “meow” because the shining of jewelry does not make any noise or sound. It just make a loud expression for the one wearing it.
The term was said to have originated in the early 1970s from TV commercials on dental products where the cleanliness and whiteness of teeth were emphasized with a sound “pling” or “bling”, complemented with an imaginary sparkle coming from an actor’s mouth. Comedians such as Martin Lawrence made fun of the commercials by vocalizing the sound effect as “bling”. The term was then used to describe a flashy piece of jewelry, like the stereotypical pimp jewelry of “Jerome” – a character in the television series Martin.
Later, the coined term (”bling”) was attributed and popularized by famous rap artists and has begun spreading outside the hip hop culture and entered the mass culture. In the year 2002, the term was added to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and was later on added to the Merriam Webster dictionary by the year 2006. To catch up with the signs of the times, big companies like Cadillac and Sprint used the word “bling” in their commercials.
In the year 2004, the Music Television (MTV) released a humorous cartoon which showed the term being used first by a rapper and then by several increasingly less “streetwise” personalities, finishing with a middle-aged white woman excitingly describing her earrings to her aged mother. The term has also extended to the Spanish Language. It was used by rappers in Reggaeton and Latin Hip Hop from Panama and Puerto Rico. However, the term is usually pronounced and written as “blin-blin”.
“Bling Bling” also has its significance to the society. Some people, both inside and outside the Hip Hop community, have expressed disappointment with the amplified number of advertising for very expensive and luxurious hip-hop brands in televisions and hip hop magazines. In a television interview in the year 2004, Missy Elliott, also a famous rapper, verbalized the trouble brought about by the ‘bling bling’ culture. She said that it often encourages those low-income youths, to steal or commit other crimes just to acquire such high-priced products.
Some hip hop insiders have also made the conscious choice of not wearing expensive jewelry as a declaration against the materialistic bling culture, believing that they should conduct themselves as role models and should therefore persuade and support the youth to invest sensibly and responsibly in stable and established, long-term assets, rather carelessly spend their money.
