blew

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense of blow.

   A cold wind blew off the lake and rattled the windows.

   The referee blew the whistle to end the match.

   Note

   An irregular past with no -ed ending. It comes straight from Old English blēow, through Middle English blew. It serves every use of blow, with or without an object: the wind blew, she blew out the candle, the glassmaker blew a bowl. In careful English it stops at the simple past. After have or had the standard form is blown, and blew as a participle marks speech as colloquial.

2. 2
   verbcolloquial

   Past participle of blow. Nonstandard; the standard past participle is blown.

   The gusts had blew several shingles off the roof before noon.

   We found that someone had blew the door wide open during the night.

   Note

   A participle that has slipped out of standard writing. After have, had or a passive be, edited English uses blown: the roof had blown off, the door was blown open. Blew in that slot is now colloquial, heard in casual speech far more than seen in print. Learners should recognize it but not copy it, because in formal writing "had blew" reads as an error.

3. 3
   nounobsoletecountable or uncountable

   Obsolete form of blue (the color).

   Note

   An old spelling of the color, which makes it look identical on the page to the past tense of blow. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590) has Speranza "clad in blew", the noun meaning blue clothing. Readers meeting it in early texts should simply read blue. In new writing it survives only as a deliberate archaism, with the plural blews.

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