to blow
- verb
- /bloʊ/
- Archaic
- The female fly will blow her eggs onto the decaying meat to ensure her larvae have a food source.
Examples
-
To lay her eggs efficiently, the fly tends to blow them on rotting organic material.
-
When the temperature rises, the mother insect can blow her eggs on the warm carcass for better incubation.
-
And what happens is, these bugs literally get blown from one area to another.
-
The horse drank, snuffled, and blew onto the water and drank deeply again.
Fiction book (1993) -
In the dim light, those pedestrians who saw it scurrying up the street believed it to be blown along by the breeze.
Fiction book (1990)
Synonyms
To make and leave an egg outside the body
To lay eggs, usually by insects and other small animals
Idioms
- Informal
To leave a place quickly because you do not want to be there
- Offensive
Informal and rude way to use up all your energy or resources at once
Phrasal Verbs
- Informal
To not attend or take part in something you should, often to do something else instead
- Informal
Do something active, like go for a run, to feel less angry or stressed
To touch your lips with one hand then move that hand toward someone to show love
To make a small round pocket of air in soapy water by puffing with your mouth
- Informal
A plan or action that fails suddenly and causes big problems for the person who planned it
- Informal
Make someone have bad back pain from lifting something heavy
Compounds
A large fly with a shiny blue-green body that lays eggs on dead animals and in wounds
- Specialized
A machine that makes hollow plastic items like bottles by heating plastic and using air to shape it
- Specialized
A machine that makes hollow plastic items like bottles by using air to push heated plastic into a mold
Surface Forms
Etymology
This old verb blow meaning 'to lay eggs on meat' is a special, older use that likely grew from the idea of putting small things onto a surface, similar to being 'blown' onto it. A simple image to remember is flies dropping tiny eggs onto meat.