Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a euph. for a taboo word, usu. damn adj./damned adj.; also as adv. (see cite 1960).

[1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict. 6: Blank – frustrated, baffled].
1857		Dickens ‘Farce for the Championship’ in All the Year Round 23 June 572/1: Enter a closely shaven, bullet-headed fellow in an ecstasy of excitement [...] ‘So help me,’ he cries delightedly, ‘if he ain’t a blank picter with the weins in his face down ’ere and ’ere, a showin’ out just as if a blank hartist ’ad painted him. Tell yer, he’s beautiful, fine as a blank greyhound, with a blank heavy air with him that looks blank like winnin.’.
1869		Sportsman (London) : Notes on News [...] Everybody remembers Marryat’s polite naval officer who, when dissatisfied with the conduct of any of his inferiors, addressed them [...] as follows:—‘ Allow me, Mr — [...] to inform you that you are a blank blank son of a blank sea blank’.
1866		Maidstone Teleg. 19 May 3/6: Here you are plenty for eating and drinking without (blanking) about and slaving yourself to death, and who the (blank’s) going to pay for lodgings, when the (blanked) guardians are paid to look after us.
1871		Dly Teleg. & Courier 16 Feb. 3/1: Drunk and furious [...] shrieking forth his determination to dash out the brains of any blank, blank, double-blank policeman.
1876		B. Harte Gabriel Conroy I 157: Women were blank fools anyway.
1878		S. James Vagabond Papers (5th series) 40: It is a blank shame that such a child should be allowed to come to such a blank place as this.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 18 Dec. 4/3: I’ve been in this country for five an’ twenty years, and all I’ve got’s arf a blank blanket and a blank dog.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Mar. 6/4: [He] vowed with an oath [...] that ‘some blank blanked son of a blank’ had stolon not only tho key but his pocketbook.
1887		(con. 1861–5) J.D. Billings Hardtack and Coffee 132: He would instantly hurl it across the camp and break out with such remarks as [...] ‘always his blank luck’.
1888		J. Runciman Chequers 53: The blank, blank swine of a blank landlord.
1890		Sporting Times 8 Feb. 1/4: Well, strike me blanky blankity blank, I should be a blank, dash, blanky, blank if I didn’t.
1890		Sporting Times 8 Nov. 1/2: Me go out? Take me for a blank, blanking, blankety lunatic?
1896		West Coast Times (N.Z.) 16 July 3/1: He would not be humbugged with the blank old bitch much longer.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 July 14/2: Correspondents in S’Africa pay a unanimous tribute to the great Australian Blanky, and state that in curse-slanguage the man from this great blank continent is laps ahead of Tommy Atkins. When an occasion arrives for extra-special profanity the Cornstalk or Gum-sucker is deputed to meet the case, and he never fails.
1903		J. Conrad Typhoon 147: He didn’t mind, he said, the trouble of punching their blanked heads down there, blank his soul, but did the condemned sailors think you could keep steam up in the God-forsaken boilers simply by knocking the blanked stokers about?
1907		C. M’Govern By Bolo and Krag 132: You are just a blank, blank, blank chump; a blank, blank, blank monkey – do you hear me?
1907		N.Z. Truth 21 Dec. 7/4: Somebody used horrible language to him [...] and Bob repeated it by saying, ‘What? Call me a blankety blank blanking blanker!!’.
1910		H. Hapgood Types From City Streets 160: You dude! [...] you blank, blank, blankety blank, you come down here in your swell clothes and pipe us off.
1919		C.H. Thorp Handful of Ausseys 203: You cold-footed blankin’ crimson crawlin’ blankers, yez.
1924		‘Digit’ Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo 48: Put those blank cigarettes out.
1927		(con. 1920s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 436: That’ll give the blank, blank, blank of a blank some idea of the fun we’ll have watching him squirm.
1930		(con. 1910s) L. Nason A Corporal Once 53: That blank-dashed, cross-cut, blanket-branded, tinhorn, two-for-a-nickel, son of a mangy coyote.
1948		C. Day Lewis Otterbury Incident 167: ‘Gaw blank my blank eyes! It’s a crowd of blank blank kids!’ – the blanks stand for unsavoury language with which the censor would not allow me to sully my page.
1960		L. Davidson Night of Wenceslas 170: ‘I been shot [...] I been blank blank well shot’.