Also 9 Sc. blab. [The vb. appears in 15th, the sb. in 16th c. Like BLEB, expressing the action of the lips in producing a bubble. Some feeling of association with BLOW may have helped the formation or perpetuation of the word. Cf. BLAB, BLOBBER, BLUBBER.]
1. A bubble. Obs. exc. north. dial.
1536. Bellenden, Cron. Scot. (1821), I. p. xliii. Gif thay be handillit, thay melt away like ane blob of watter.
1570. Levins, Manip., 154. Blob on the water, bulla.
1863. Mrs. Toogood, Yorksh. Dial., Watter-blobs, bubbles of soap and water made with a pipe by children.
1875. Whitby Gloss. (E. D. S.), Bleb or Blob, a bubble.
2. A pimple, pustule. north. dial. Also fig.
1597. Lowe, Chirurg. (1634), 82. Little blobs upon the skin, produced of an ebulition of the bloud.
1614. Sco. Venus (1876), 32. O filthy blob and staine.
3. A drop or globule of liquid or viscid substance.
1725. Ramsay, Gentle Sheph., II. ii. Her een the clearest blob o’ dew outshines.
1823. Galt, Entail, I. xxiii. 201. Haud it [a humble bee] till I take out the honey blob.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, iii. The letter was … stuck down with a blob of ink.
1866. Argyll, Reign of Law, ii. (ed. 4), 120. Animals which are mere blobs of jelly.
b. Applied to a soft round fruit, as a gooseberry; also dial. to globular or drop-like flowers, as the Globe-flower, Foxglove, etc.
c. 1750. Ld. Balmerino, in Ramsay, Remin. (ed. 18), 254. Gie me a ha’porth of honey blobs [yellow gooseberries].
1868. ‘Holme Lee,’ B. Godfrey, xlix. 275. The scarlet blobs [= cherries] that they … loved.
4. A small rounded mass of color.
1863. Reader, 31 Oct., 502. In the design one of the wrestlers [is] destitute of eyebrows … but adorned with compensating blobs of hair upon the forehead.
1872. Black, Adv. Phaeton, v. 54. A little blob of strong colour.
1880. Birdwood, Ind. Art, II. 9. Worthless gems which have no value as precious stones, but only as barbaric blobs of colour.
5. A solid oval mass of iron forming the base of one of the iron beams or posts which support the deck of a ship.
1863. Times, 19 March, 14/2. The tee, the beam, and the blob were made separately in lengths, and then welded together.
6. fig. A pouting lower lip.
1762. Collins, Misc., 122 (Halliw.). Wit hung her blob, ev’n Humour seem’d to mourn.
b. slang phrase. On the blob: by word of mouth. Cf. BLAB.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 311. Those [professional beggars] who ‘do it on the blob’ (by word of mouth) and those who do it by ‘screwing,’ that is, by petitions and letters.
7. Comb., as blob-cheeked, -headed adjs.
1552. Huloet, Blobbe cheked, buccones.
1553. T. Wilson, Rhet., 78 b. A man with a bottell nose, blobb cheaked.
1865. Morn. Star, 8 May. A blob-headed man with mauve-coloured hair.
1681. Grew, Musæum, I. § 6. ii. 148 (J.). A Bloblip’d-shell, which seemeth to be a kind of Muscle.
