subs. (common).—The lungs. Hence BELLOWS TO MEND, of a broken-winded horse or one out of breath; WINDED (q.v.). Also (American) BELLOWSES.
1615. LATHAM, Falconry (1633), 115. The lungs doe draw a breath … When these BELLOWES doe decay, then health from both doth fade away.
1631. DONNE, Elegy [Farr, S. P. (1848), 21]. We, to live, our BELLOWS wear, and breath.
1711. Vind. Sach., 91. He would be insufferably noisy in Company, if his BELLOWS would hold.
1730. JAMES MILLER, The Humours of Oxford, V., 2. Don’t abuse my wife—slut quotha! i’gad let me tell you, she has done a cleaner thing than you’ll ever do while your BELLOWS blow, old lady.
c. 1777. Kilmainham Minit [Ireland Sixty Years Ago, 88].
| You ’d bring back de PUFF to my BELLOWS, | |
| And set me once more on my pins. |
1821. W. T. MONCRIEFF, Tom and Jerry, ii., 3. Drink, they say, and you’ll ne’er burn the BELLOWS.
1843. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), Sam Slick in England, xxii. … How I would like to lick him … round the park … to improve his wind, and teach him how to mend his pace. I’d repair his old BELLOWSES for him.
1848. J. R. LOWELL, The Biglow Papers, I., 23. His BELLOWSES is sound enough.
1853. REV. E. BRADLEY (‘Cuthbert Bede’), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, II., iv. To one gentleman he would pleasantly observe, as he tapped him on the chest, ‘BELLOWS TO MEND for you, my buck!’
1875. W. D. WHITNEY, The Life and Growth of Language, iv. 59. The lungs are, as it were, the BELLOWS of the organ.
