Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also blowing off) boasting, aggrandizing [blow v.¹ (1e)].

1872		‘Mark Twain’ Roughing It 224: What’s your idea for rakin’ up old personalities and blowin’ about your father?
1873		Trollope Aus. and N.Z. I 387: A fine art much cultivated in the colonies, for which the colonial phrase of ‘blowing’ has been created.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Mar. 4/1: Australians may be given to ‘blowing,’ but ‘gas’ does not always carry the day, as was exemplified in a recent case of ‘trying it on,’ by our Sydney Gaslight Company.
1884		C.F. Lummis letter 13 Nov. in Byrkit Letters from the Southwest (1989) 80: You fooled these men out here to starve by your damned blowing.
1888		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 79: We told him the cattle would fetch that much more money on account of the lunch and the blowing the auctioneer was able to do.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 23 Aug. 17/2: The hard-headed ‘Pendragon’ [...] says [...] it is pleasant to set Stanbury’s act in contrast to ‘the blowing and the gas which in Australia go, as a rule, hand-in-hand with – not incompetency and dufferism, as with us, but with real right-down, first-chop talent, courage and ability.’.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 194: It was probably just a bit of silly blowing on Wills’s part.
1973		D. Williamson What If You Died Tomorrow (1977) II i: You stop blowing off about how you bloody well near write my books for me.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 16/1: blowing/blowing off boasting or talking too much; eg ‘Bill’s blowing off again about his prowess with the cue.’.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

2. telling off, reprimanding [blow v.¹ (1b)].

1874		J.H. Carter ‘The Blood-Stained Boot-Jack’ Log of Commodore Rollingpin 257: Look heah, you better jest dry up and stop your blowin, You can’t scar me.
1877		Five Years’ Penal Servitude 4: Both desisted from their own recriminations as to ‘rounding’ and ‘blowing’ on each other.
1888		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 177: One of them had just opened out for a bit of blowing. ‘Billy, old man [...] I’ll report you to the Company if you crawl along this way.’.
1970		B. Seale Seize the Time 29: All this blowing that was going on in the streets that day.