blower

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English blouere,^[2][3] inherited from Old English blāwere,^{[4][5][3][2][6]} an agent noun formed from blāwan (“to blow”) with the suffix -ere,^[5][4][6] the ancestors of blow and -er.^[3][7] The Old English verb is from Proto-Germanic *blēaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁- (“to blow”), the root of Latin flō (“to blow”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

One who blows: in Old English, in King Ælfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care, where it renders the Latin conflator.^[4][6] Early Middle English has horn blowers, "twenti oðer þritti horn blaweres", in the Peterborough Chronicle (before 1131).^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English a blouere could be a horn blower, a bellows blower in a foundry, a bellows or horn itself, or one who speaks loudly or boastfully, and it was also a surname.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as a melter of tin, quoting Carew's Survey of Cornwall.^[9] The boaster sense is dated by the Shorter Oxford to the late 16th century, chiefly in dialect and in American and Australian slang;^[7] the OED's first quotation is American, from 1863,^[4] Bartlett described a blower in 1859 as a braggart and teller of tall tales,^[10] and Morris recorded it in Australia in 1890.^[11] Mechanical blowers are recorded from 1795, first a metal plate fixed before a fire to increase the draught,^[4][3] then fans for ventilation, drying and furnace blasts (1858) and the supercharger of an aero engine (1920).^[4] In mining, from 1822, a blower was a jet of gas escaping from a fissure in a coal seam,^[4] a sense the English Dialect Dictionary records in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire and Staffordshire.^[12] From 1922 it was a colloquial word for a speaking-tube and then a telephone;^[4][3][13] Dalzell explains that the speaking-tube was blown through to alert the listener, and that the word was also used for the telegraph that carried racing results and, during the Second World War, for a public address system.^[13] In American slang it was a private communication system, as between police headquarters and patrol cars or between bookmakers.^[5]

Timeline

• Old English – one who blows.^[4][6]
• before 1131 – a horn blower.^[2][3]
• late 16th century – a boaster.^[7] The OED's first quotation for this sense is American, from 1863.^[4]
• 1795 – a device that produces a current of air, such as a plate set before a fire.^[4][3]
• 1822 – a jet of gas escaping from a fissure in a coal mine.^[4]
• 1854 – a whale.^[4]
• 1858 – a fan for ventilation, drying or a furnace blast.^[4]
• 1920 – the supercharger of an aero engine.^[4]
• 1922 – a speaking-tube or telephone.^[4][3][13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person or thing that blows, especially a worker who shapes glass by blowing.^[5][4][7]
2. A device that produces a current of air, such as a fan or a supercharger.^[5][4][7]
3. (British, informal) A telephone: She was on the blower to her sister all evening.^{[13][4][7][14]}
4. (Australian and New Zealand, informal) A boaster.^{[14][15][7][5]}
5. An escape of gas through a fissure in a coal mine, or the fissure itself.^[4][7][12]
6. A whale; also a puffer fish.^[4][5]

Word family

• mindblower
• snowblower
• whistle-blower

Related words

• blowpipe
• blow
• blast
• inflate

Usage notes

A rare blower, a plant that blooms early or late, is formed separately from blow in the sense to bloom, and is recorded from 1796.^[4][7] In 17th- and 18th-century thieves' cant a blower was a woman, especially a prostitute, a variant of blowen.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
11. ^ Morris, Edward E. (1898), Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages, London: Macmillan
12. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
13. ^ a b c d Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
14. ^ a b Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Deverson, Tony; Kennedy, Graeme, eds. (2005), The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary, Auckland: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com