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 1883. Miss Braddon, Golden Calf, ch. xxvi. 'Blow his station in life! If he was a duke I shouldn't want him.'

5. (general.)—To lose or spend money. Cf., Blue.

6. (University.)—To indulge in a frolic or spree. Cf., Blow out; also To go on the blow.

7. (Winchester School.)—To blush.

To bite the blow, phr. (old cant).—To steal goods; to Prig, which see for synonyms.

Blow a Cloud, verbal phr. (colloquial).—To smoke a cigar or pipe; Hotten says, 'a phrase used two centuries ago' but gives no authority, and Murray's earliest example only dates from 1855, but as will be seen below, it occurs in Tom Crib in 1819.

1819. Moore, Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress, p. 39. His fame I need not tell, For that, my friends, all England's loud with; But this I'll say, a civiller Swell I'd never wish to blow a cloud with.

1870. M. Twain, Innocents Abroad, ch. vii. And blowing suffocating 'clouds' and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking-room at night.

French Synonyms. Tubons en une (popular: 'let's blow a cloud'; tuber = to smoke); piper; la fumerie (popular: smoking); faire du brouillard ('to produce or make a fog or mist'); en bourrer une; bouffarder. A German Synonym is Esef schwächen, or schweihen.

Blow-Book, subs. (old).—A book containing indelicate or 'smutty' pictures.

1708. Post Man, 8 June. Last Sunday a person did pennance in the Chapter-House of St. Paul's, London, for publickly shewing in Bartholomew Fair a book called a blow-book, in which were many obscene and filthy pictures: the book was likewise burnt, and the person paid costs.

Blowed. To be blowed, verb (familiar).—Blowed is here a euphemism for 'damned'; to all intents and purposes, it is frequently little more than a thinly-veiled oath. Hotten says that Tom Hood used to tell the following story:—'I was once asked to contribute to a new journal, not exactly gratuitously, but at a very small advance upon nothing—and avowedly because the work had been planned according to that estimate. However, I accepted the terms conditionally—that is to say, provided the principle could be properly carried out. Accordingly, I wrote to my butcher, baker, and other tradesmen, informing them that it was necessary, for the sake of cheap literature and the interest of the reading public, that they should furnish me with their several commodities at a very trifling per-centage above cost price. It will be sufficient to quote the answer of the butcher:—"Sir,—Respectin' your note, Cheap literater be blowed! Butchers must live as well as other pepel—and if so be you or the readin' publick wants to have meat at prime cost, you must buy your own beastesses, and kill yourselves.—I remain, etc., John Stokes."'

Cf., Blow me!

1835. Dickens, Sketches by Boz, p. 50. Others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression, 'You be blowed.'