blowing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of blow.

   Smoke was blowing across the highway, reducing visibility for drivers.

   He spent the morning blowing leaves off the driveway.

   Note

   Two jobs share this spelling. As a participle it builds progressive tenses with be and works both ways: intransitive when smoke or wind is blowing, transitive when someone is blowing leaves or shaping glass. As a gerund it names the activity itself (blowing glass takes patience). Its -ing goes back to the Old English participle blāwende, an ending that later merged with the one behind the countable noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The action performed by a person or thing that blows, or that which blows.

   The steady blowing from the bellows kept the forge fire roaring.

   Sailors listened for the blowing of the whales surfacing near the boat.

   Note

   A true noun with its own lineage: Old English blāwung, a word for the act itself rather than a form of the verb. Being countable, it takes a plural, and blowings is often paired with a near-synonym for noisy breath: the puffings and blowings of an unfit runner, or the genteel blowings and whiffings over saucered tea in Charlotte MacLeod's The Grub-and-Stakers House a Haunt (2014). It can also name a sound, as in the blowings of a trumpet.

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