[f. BLAST v. or (in sense 7) sb. + -ER1.]
1. One who blows or emits blasts.
1664. Cotton, Poet. Wks. (1765), 18. You there [Boreas], Goodman Blaster.
1854. Blackie, in Blackw. Mag., LXXVI. 261.
| She to that fiery blaster, | |
| Typhon, Cilicia’s curse of yore | |
| A triform goatish portent bore, | |
| With serpent’s sting and lion’s roar. |
† 2. A trumpeter. Obs.
1575. Laneham, Lett. (1871), 33. Triton, Neptunes blaster.
3. He who or that which blights, or ruins.
1599. Marston, Sco. Villanie, To Detract., 165. Vile blaster of the freshest bloomes on earth … Detraction.
1760. Foote, Minor, I. i. Dead to pleasures themselves, and the blasters of it in others.
† 4. One of a sect of free-thinkers in Ireland about 1738. Obs.
c. 1738. Rep. Irish Comm. Relig., in Fraser, Berkeley, vii. 254. Loose and disorderly persons have of late erected themselves into a Society or Club under the name of Blasters.
5. One who blasts rocks.
1776. Pennant, Tour Scotl. (1790), III. 34. A blaster was kept in constant employment, to blast with gunpowder the great stones.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 10 Oct., 8/2. A rock blaster … explaining the working of a dynamite cartridge.
6. An iron borer used for rocks to be blasted.
7. Anything designed to produce a blast or draught of air.
1830. M. Donovan, Dom. Econ., I. 353. The smoke and soot … are carried up the funnel over the mouth of the oven, the ascent being promoted by laying a blaster over the mouth: the blaster is a large piece of sheet-iron.
8. dial. (Sc.) A smoker.
