1. A blanket that has been drenched in water; esp. one used for quenching a conflagration. Chiefly in allusive use.
1662. Atwell, Faithf. Surveyor, 95. Of quenching an house on fire. The Instruments … are forks, wet-blankets, ladders,… pails, &c. Ibid., 97. Cover the out-side with wet blankets, hair-cloths, &c. that neither the flame get out nor air get in.
1702. Baynard, Cold Bathing, II. (1709), 264. At Whitny in Oxfordshire, those who work at the Blanket-Mills, carry wet Blankets in their Arms next their Breast, Winter and Summer, and never catch Cold.
1772. Cumberland, Fashionable Lover, I. i. 4. His humours damp all mirth and merriment, as a wet blanket does a fire.
1821. Byron, Juan, III. xxxvi. Lambro’s reception at his people’s banquet Was such as fire accords to a wet blanket.
1838. Pusey, in Liddon, Life (1893), II. xxi. 54. It seems like a wet blanket cast upon all the fire we have been fanning.
2. fig. a. Something that acts as a damper to activity, enthusiasm or cheerfulness.
1810. Sir G. Jackson, Diaries & Lett. (1873), I. 143. It would have been a cruel stroke of fate … if … a wet blanket [had] been thrown over them [sc. gaieties].
1829. Sporting Mag., XXIII. 426. All was in readiness … when a wet blanket was thrown upon all their hopes.
1848. Mrs. Gaskell, Mary Barton, ii. It was an unlucky toast or sentiment…. It was a wet blanket to the evening.
1894. Jessopp, Random Roaming, etc. vi. 195. That chilling maxim—the wet-blanket of enthusiasm.
b. A person who has a depressing or dispiriting effect on those around him.
1857. Mrs. Mathews, Tea-Table T., I. 185. Such people may be termed the wet blankets of society.
1875. ‘Shelsley Beauchamp,’ Nelly Hamilton, II. 18. As he is of course the wet blanket of the party, they are none of them sorry when he leaves again.
1883. Miss Broughton, Belinda, II. iv. She would spoil the whole thing; she is such a wet blanket.
1897. Mrs. Oliphant, W. Blackwood, I. iii. 128. Sometimes he called her a wet blanket, when she thus damped his ardour.
Hence Wet-blanket v. trans., to throw a damper on, discourage, depress. Also (nonce-wds.) Wet-blanketing ppl. a.; Wet-blanketiveness; Wet-blanketty a.
1866. J. D. Coleridge, Lett., in Life Ld. Coleridge (1904), II. 140. I think any one would have felt *wet-blanketed by the utter commonplaceness of the whole affair.
1868. Louisa M. Alcott, Little Women, xxi. I know Meg would wet-blanket such a proposal, but I thought you had more spirit.
1893. W. A. Shee, My Contemp., iii. 47. Such people … should … not be allowed to wet-blanket the world with their stolid stare and solemn silence.
1901. Scotsman, 12 March, 9/5. Power traction … had been effectively wetblanketed for fully two generations.
1843. J. F. Murray, World of London, I. 131. The impossible-mongering, cold-water-throwing, *wet-blanketting-fellows, howled in this way about the Thames tunnel.
1834. Fraser’s Mag., X. 412. Throwing off the *‘wet-blanketiveness’ which usually extinguishes your social qualities.
1848. Zoologist, VI. 2048. Adapting my phraseology to the author’s, I would say such parts of the book are very *‘wet-blanketty.’
