the.com/blower
a machine that moves more air than your loudest opinions and gets paid for it
means A device that pushes or forces a stream of air, whether to inflate, cool, ventilate, or clear away debris — and, in older British slang, a telephone.
from From the verb 'blow,' which traces back to Old English 'blawan,' to move air with the breath — a word with deep Germanic roots, a cousin of German 'blähen' (to inflate) and ultimately tied to a Proto-Indo-European base meaning 'to swell or puff up.' Add the agent suffix '-er' and you get 'one that blows,' first for people and breath, later transferred to any contraption doing the same job harder. The British 'on the blower' for 'on the phone' likely springs from early telephone and speaking-tube systems where you literally blew down the tube to get attention at the other end.
- slang origin
- British slang for telephone, from speaking-tube intercoms
- engine boost
- supercharger blowers force air to multiply horsepower
- glassmaking
- glassblowers shape molten silica with nothing but breath
- snow duty
- snow blowers can hurl flakes over thirty feet
- leaf wars
- gas leaf blowers face bans for shattering urban quiet
leaf blower — handheld or wheeled garden tool, first patented by beech aircraft in 1948
glass blower — artisan craft dating to 50 bc in sidon, still practiced at murano, venice
whale blower — the dorsal opening through which whales expel air, creates distinctive spray patterns