Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a slatternly woman, a prostitute.

1573		T. Tusser Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1878) 43: Out trudgeth Hew make shift, with hooke & with line: Whiles Gillet, his blouse is a milking thy cow, Sir Hew is a rigging thy gate or the plow.
1577		Misogonus in Farmer (1906) II iv: A mincing lass, a honeysweet blowse!
1593		T. Lodge Phyllis n.p.: Suborner of contempt, lasciuious blowse, / By whom my ioyes were blasted and frost-bitten. / Mistresse of murthers, loosenesse, and what not?
1597		J. Hall Virgidemiarum (1599) Bk I 9: Nor list I sonnet of my Mistresse face, To paint some Blowesse with a borrowed grace.
1605		Chapman All Fooles IV i: I will not hear a word; out, out upon thee! Wed without my advice, my love, my knowledge, Ay, and a beggar, too, a trull, a blowse!
1607		J. Marston What You Will n.p.: Marries that loath’d blowze.
1618		Owles almanacke 39: Fiue hundred Virgins shall be maried in their veluet potlids, and but ten millions of blowses in their Felt stoole-pans.
1621		R. Burton Anatomy of Melancholy 3.3.4.2: I had rather marry a faire one, and put it to the hazard, then be troubled with a blowze.
1631		R. Brathwait Whimzies II 30: His bonny Blouze, or dainty doxie, being commonly a collapsed Tinkers wife, or some high way commodity.
1631		J. Shirley Schoole of Complement 36: Venus her selfe the Queene of Cytheron, / When she is riding through the milky way, / Drawne with white Doues, is but a blowze.
1639		Ford Lady’s Trial III i: Wench is your trull, your blouze, your dowdie.
1648		J. Shirley Wits Labyrinth 40: Venus compar’d to her, was but a Blowze.
1654		Witts Recreations ‘Fancies & Fantasticks’ No. 106: Yet he’l be thought or seen; / So good as George-a-Green; / And calls his Blouze his Queen.
1659		Greene & Lodge Lady Alimony IV ii: Doth your Mistress take us, you nitty-napty Rascal, for her Bordella’s Blouses?
1659		J. Shirley Honoria and Mammon III i: Mammon is a Blouze, A deformed Gipsie.
1665		J. Crowne Pandion and Amphigenia 265: Mathilda [...] in comparison of whom Venus was but a blowze.
1668		‘The Prentices’ Answer to the Whores’ Petition’ in Ebsworth Bagford Ballads (1878) II 510: We scorn such Pocky Jades, such dirty Blowses.
1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) 133: All the dainty, Lazie blouses.
1674		T. Duffet Empress of Morocco Act III: Sweet blouz you make us all look sadly, To see you still take on thus madly.
1680		M. Stevenson Wits Paraphras’d 71: Such are thy Charms, did thou but send / When the three Blousses did content.
1690		in D’Urfey Collin’s Walk canto 4 182: One evening to my Fathers House, Came a Young Tawney tatter’d Blowse [...] And at her Back a Kid that cry’d.
1692		E. Ward Miracles perform'd by Money n.p.: Be a Pimp, or a Pander / [...] / Swear old Men are young, and Queen Blowze is a Beauty.
1700		N. Ward London Spy XV 351: Neither could the good Woman [...] avoid, being new Christen’d by some Drunken Godfather or other, the name of [...] Dame Saucy, Goody Blowze, Gammer Tattle, or the like.
c.1705		‘Robin & Nan’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) II 129: Now, said he, my charming blowsy, / Let us love and banish fear.
1705–7		N. Ward Hudibras Redivivus II:7 20: So the old Babylonian blouze, And her demure fanatic Spouse.
1709		‘Phoebe Crackenthorpe’ Female Tatler (1992) (39) 92: Joan the blowze, nay ev’n the great red-haired wench in Cheapside, make horrid complaints against him.
1712		N. Ward Poetical Entertainer I 39: As oft as the Adult’rous Blowze Could feign a Lye to cheat her Spouse.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy I 5: Adieu to the Knight [...] that keeps a Blowz, And beats his spouse. [Ibid.] V 349: Sly Spouses with Blouses, grave Horners, in Corners. [Ibid.] 194: May the Drone of my Bag never hum, / If I fail to remember my Blowze.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 203: Blowes, a mistress, also a whore.
1725		View of London & Westminster (2nd part) 41: [in a list of prostitutes] Miss Blouze, a Vintner’s Daughter [Is Visited] By a Nobleman.
1732		Harlot’s Progress 56: Bess Lemmox served the Wine, the Blowse, / Star’d at the Pr—st, and knit her Brows.
1748–49		Cleland Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985) 68: This Blouze had left her place in the country for a bastard.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: A blowse, or blowsabella, a woman whose hair is dishevelled, and hanging about her face; a slattern.
1786		F. Pilon He Would be a Soldier II ii: Has Doll Blouze been with the parish officers?
1790		‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow 49: But what’s very odd, the young blouze, / Each night puts the yard in her entry.
1797		Sporting Mag. June X 175/2: In the belle or the blowze – in the pert or the prim.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1827		Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 183: Blowsey Suke, in the rear, was the bridesmaid to her friend betsey.
1836		in Flash Casket 97: [song title] Moll Blowse of Saffron Hill.
1847–81		Halliwell Dict. Archaic and Provincial Words I 188/1: Blouse... a woman with hair or head-dress loose and disordered, or decorated with vulgar finery.
1850		E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime in Poetical Works 2 (1878) 336: Tell-tale, Jillet, Vagrant, Fibber, / Blouze, Coquette, Slut, Gaptooth, Cow.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 1: Blowsey - A word applied to a coarse wench, or rough woman.
1894		A. Morrison Tales of Mean Streets (1983) 60: Blowses in feathered bonnets bawled hilarious obscenity at the jiggers.