upblow

upblow

English

Etymology

From Middle English upblowen, equivalent to up- +‎ blow.

Verb

upblow (third-person singular simple present upblows, present participle upblowing, simple past upblew, past participle upblown)

1. (transitive, archaic) To inflate.
   • 1525, uncredited translator, The noble experyence of the vertuous handy warke of surgeri by Brunschwig, Hieronymus, London, Chapter 48 “Of the wounde in the brest,”

     […] the pacyent hath heuynes and vpblowynge in the syde […]

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, page 51:

     And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
     Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne,
     His belly was vpblowne with luxury;

   • 1810, George Crabbe, The Borough, Letter 16, p. 214,

     With Wine inflated, Man is all upblown,

     And feels a Power which he believes his own;

2. (transitive, archaic) To explode, blow up.
   • 1666, anonymous, Song 37, in Thomas Davidson, Cantus, songs and Fancies, to three, four, or five parts, Aberdeen,

     Ingyniers in the trench

     earth, earth uprearing,

     Gun-powder in the mynes,

     Pagans upblowing.

   • 1908, Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts: A Drama of the Napoleonic Wars, in Three Parts, Nineteen Acts, & One Hundred and Thirty Scenes, part third, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, St. Martin’s Street, OCLC 81267352, Act 3, scene 5, page 392:

     The bridge of Lindenau has been upblown!

3. (transitive, intransitive, archaic) To blow in an upward direction.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, page 447:

     The watry Southwinde from the seabord coste
     Vpblowing, doth disperse the vapour lo’ste,

   • 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, part 5, in Lyrical Ballads, London: J. & A. Arch, p. 28,

     The helmsman steerd, the ship mov’d on;

     Yet never a breeze up-blew;

   • 1814, Henry Francis Cary (translator), The Vision of Purgatory from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Canto 25,

     Here the rocky precipice

     Hurls forth redundant flames, and from the rim

     A blast upblown, with forcible rebuff

     Driveth them back,

   • 1893, Louise Imogen Guiney, “Peter Rugg the Bostonian” in A Roadside Harp, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 3,

     The woods break down, the sand upblows

     In blinding volleys warm;

   • 1915, Vance Thompson, “Swift Reversal to Barbarism” in Horrors and Atrocities of the Great War, L.T. Myers, p. 105,

     A blazing August sun; a road of pebbles and stinging, upblown dust.

Translations

inflate

Dutch: opblazen (nl) German: aufblasen (de)

Anagrams

• Publow, blow up, blow-up, blowup