# bless you

Pronunciation: say "BLES yoo" /ˈblɛs juː/

## Idiom

1. A courteous response offered to someone immediately after they sneeze.
   - Simple: What you say to be polite when someone sneezes.
   - _Someone sneezed in the back row, and half the room murmured, "Bless you."_
   - _"Bless you!" "Thanks, it's the pollen. It gets me every spring."_
2. Said jokingly to someone who has just used an unusual or foreign word or phrase, treating it as a sneeze to show it meant nothing to the listener.
   - Simple: A joke said when someone uses a strange or foreign word, as if the word were a sneeze.
   - _"The word you're looking for is schadenfreude." "Bless you," Dan replied, deadpan._
   - _When the chef announced that dessert was a kouign-amann, someone at the table said, "Bless you."_

## Other meanings

- (idiom) Short for (may) God bless you: said as a short prayer for the recipient.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/bless-you (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).