or blowsy, blouze, blowzy, etc., subs. (old).—A beggar’s trull; a wench; a slatternly woman: also personified as BLOWSABELLA.

1

  1557.  TUSSER, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, xvi., 37, 43 (E.D.S). Whiles Gillet, his BLOUSE is a milking thy cow.

2

  1605.  CHAPMAN, All Fools, iv., 68 (Plays, 1874).

        Wed without my advice, my love, my knowledge.
Ay, and a beggar, too, a trull, a BLOWSE!

3

  1638.  FORD, The Lady’s Trial, III., i. Wench is your trull, your BLOUZE, your dowdie.

4

  1705.  WARD, Hudibras Redivivus, II. vii. 20.

        So the old Babylonian BLOUZE,
And her demure fanatic Spouse.

5

  1706.  WARD, Hudibras Redivivus, I. x. 10. Such red-fac’d BLOUZABELLAS.

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  1857.  ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Aurora Leigh, l. 456.

        We fair, fine ladies, who park out our lives
From common sheep-paths, cannot help crows,
From flying over,—we’re as natural still
As BLOWSALINDA.

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  1881.  DAVIES, A Supplementary English Glossary, s.v. BLOUSE. A bonnet; a woman with hair or head-dress loose and disordered, or decorated with vulgar finery. (EAST.) Thoresby has, “a BLOWSE or BLAWZE, proper to women, a blossom, a wild rinish girl, proud light skirts;” and KENNETT, Lansdowne MS., 1033, “a girl or wench whose face looks red by running abroad in the wind and weather, is called a BLOUZ, and said to have a blouzing colour.” The word occurs in this last sense in TUSSER, 24; HEYWOOD’S Edward IV., 62; CLARKE’S Phraseologia Puerilis, 1655, 380; KENNETT’S Glossary, 30. BLOWESSE, HALL’S Satires, 4. To be in a BLOUSE, to look red from heat, a phrase that is used by GOLDSMITH in The Vicar of Wakefield. In some glossaries, BLOUSY, wild, disordered, confused.

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  1851.  THACKERAY, English Humorists, 167. Are not the Rosalindas of Britain as charming as the BLOUSALINDAS of The Hague?

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