[OE. bláwere, f. bláwan to BLOW1: see -ER1.]
1. gen. One who, or that which, blows. Usually followed by of (the object blown).
c. 897. K. Ælfred, Gregory’s Past., xxxvii. 268. Idel wæs se blawere.
c. 1320. Sir Tristr., I. xlix. The best blower of horn.
1545. Ludlow Churchw. Accts. (1869), 21. To the blower of the organs.
1775. Phil. Trans., LXV. 67. An expert blower of the German flute.
1872. Tennyson, Last Tourn., 540. O hunter, and O blower of the horn.
2. spec. A marine animal which ‘blows’ (see BLOW v.1 5); e.g., a whale.
1854. Bushnan, in Circ. Sc., I. 140. The common cetaceans, popularly known as blowers.
3. A mechanical contrivance for producing a current of air; e.g., a plate or sheet of metal fixed before a fire to increase the draught.
1795. Specif. Crook & German’s Patent, No. 2032. The blower was let down close to the top of the grate, so that no air could pass otherwise than through the grate.
1869. Eng. Mech., 24 Dec., 344/1. It can … be hung in front of the fire to act as a blower.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Blower, a fan or other apparatus for forcing air into a furnace or mine.
1885. Manch. Exam., 21 July, 8/1. The sweepings [were] … put through the blower instead of the winnower.
4. An escape of inflammable gas through a fissure in a coal-mine; the fissure itself; a similar current of air escaping through a fissure in a glacier.
1822. Imison, Sc. & Art, II. 59. It is disengaged from fissures in the strata … called by the miners blowers.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., 87. While cutting away the surface further, I stopped the little ‘blower.’
1862. Smiles, Engineers, III. 111. The explosive gas was issuing through a blower in the roof of the mine with a loud hissing noise.
1866. Reader, 21 July, 671. ‘Blowers’ as they are called in the north of England … streams of inflammable gas issuing from the ground.
5. fig. A boaster. dial. and in U.S. and colonies.
1863. ‘Manhattan,’ in Standard, 11 Dec., 6/1. I will say of General Grant that he is not one of the ‘blower’ generals.
1864. Spectator, 22 Oct., 1202/1. Notorious among our bar and the public as a ‘blower.’
6. Comb. with various adverbs (cf. BLOW v.1), as blower forth, in, up.
1550. J. Coke, Debate Her. Eng. & Fr. (1877), 121. Blowers forth of fayned fables.
1601. Shaks., All’s Well, I. i. 132. Blesse our poore Virginity from vnderminers and blowers vp.
1635. Swan, Spec. M., v. § 2. 176. The winds … the blowers in of rain.
