Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a worthless, conceited individual.

1834		‘The Blowen’s Ball’ in Bang-Up Songster 5: Come, play you old bloat.
1841		‘Mother H’s Knocking Shop; or, A Bit Of Old Hat!’ in Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 44: Now this old bloat had the choice of a score, / For he, you must know, was a hell of a bore.
1855		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 14 Apr. n.p.: I wish to expose a few of the ‘Bloats’ who hang around town.
1860		in Cassidy ‘More Notes from Wisconsin’ in AS (1947) XXII:4 299/1: I considered such an old bloat not worth minding.
1866		H.L. Williams N.-Y. After Dark 34: Why, you frowsy-headed bloat.
1868		H.L. Williams Black-Eyed Beauty 27: Hay, you bloats with that ambulance, come over here.
1872		Wkly Kansas Chief (Troy, KS) 26 Dec. 1/6: What a mean bloat I was, going to the stub-tailed dogs with my hat over my eyes.
1910		Evers & Fullerton Touching Second 298: Then Griff, smiling and exasperating, said: ‘Hit this, you big bloat’.

2. a drunkard; thus bloated adj., drunk.

1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 10 Dec. n.p.: Archy, you old bloat, do you swill gin as bad as ever?
1853		Ohio Organ (Cincinnati, OH) 16 Sept. 5/1: ‘We consider the result [...] a great triumph over the old whiskey bloats’.
1866		H.L. Williams N.-Y. After Dark 63: The customers are [...] expressively named ‘bloats,’ ‘old soaks,’ ‘bummers,’ ‘rummies,’ ‘tods’ and so on.
1871		Congressional Globe Feb. Appendix 129/1: Wife whippers, penitentiary birds, street vagabonds, beastly bloats, and convicted felons [DN].
1889		Farmer Americanisms 64/1: Bloat (cant), a drowned body; also a drunkard. The simile which groups the two is, perhaps, not far wrong.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 9: Bloat, a drunkard.
1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 212: bloated, intoxicated. ‘Isn’t it a shame that that sweet little woman must live with a bloated man?’.
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 10: I guess that bloat believes in savin.
1933		‘William Juniper’ True Drunkard’s Delight.

3. (Aus.) the victim of drowning.

1895

Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 9: Bloat, a drowned corpse.