Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a mild pej.; also as adv.

1840		E. Howard Jack Ashore I 132: Groggy, you blinking varmint, you are already three sheets in the wind].
1884		Western Mail 16 Oct. 3/7: ‘I ain’t going to have any more at that blinking old school,’ he tells her.
1893		H. Castling ‘Rickety Rackety Crew’ 🎵 We made them booze as bad as us, and all the blinking lot/ [...] / Rare old, fair old rickety rackety crew.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 29 Sept. 31/2: There at seven in the morning do I count my daily cash, / While the home-returning reveller calls for ‘soda and a dash.’ / And the weary hansom-cabbies set the blinking squatters down, / Who, all night, in savage freedom, have been ‘knocking round the town.’.
1907		Gem 16 Mar. 2: Not there, you blinking Irishman.
1917		Union Jack 5 May 1: Yer blinkin’ goat! For two pins I’d – I’d –.
1920		‘Sapper’ Bulldog Drummond 71: You prisheless ole bean [...] thish blinking cabsh my show. [Ibid.] 161: For Heaven’s sake get a move on with that blinking ladder.
1923		Truth (Wellington) 29 Dec. 12/4: Dad: You’d better turn out that nag of yours. He’s got a touch of the greasy heel. Choom: Greasy ’eel! Why, ’e might er slipped and broke me blinkin’ neck!
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 310: Did he tell you about his being a jolly old hero in the blinkin’ war?
1929		Graphic (London) 23 Mar. 22/3: ‘Well...strike me up a gum tree!’ he exclaimed [...] ‘What a blinkin’ nerve!’.
1934		Rover 13 Jan. 40: I’m going to put a clean apron on for his blinkin’ lordship.
1937		Referee (NSW) 7 Oct. 14/1: So write your cheques and figures, like the Watsons used to do, and / Paint the blinkin’ township all in red.
1941		A. Gurney Bluey & Curley 10 July [synd. cartoon strip] Why don’t you take it [i.e. tough meat] back to the blinkin’ cook?
1943		Mass-Observation Report on Juvenile Drinking 11: A very young girl in the A.T.S. passed [...] shouting ‘He’s been asking for trouble all the evening. All right, I’ll blind him. But not with a blinkin’ glass’.
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 100: We can’t turn out to no fire with our kit all over the shop like a blinking jumble sale.
1959		F. Norman Fings I i: Get it yerself, I’m not yer blinking tea boy.
1962		K. Waterhouse There is a Happy Land (1964) 113: I wasn’t taking that for one. Not from Raymond blinking Garnett.
1972		C.E. Palmer Wooing of Beppo Tate 16: Give your boy wrong ideas ’bout me. An’ so blinkin’ soon!
1974		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell Plays Solomon (1976) 115: Take more than Keith O’blinking Rourke to make him lose his bottle.
1981		J. Charles Black Billy Tea 6: I’d sooner have a cup o’ tea, Than all your blinking beer.
1982		(con. 1953) P. Bailey Eng. Madam 49: These student nurse’s they are always in a blinken hurry.
1998		G. Burn Happy Like Murderers 167: Blinking barge people gets on my nerves.
2000		Guardian 16 Feb. 18: Did you not get the pager message [...] telling you to change the blinking first paragraph?
2011		Independent 2 June 24/4: You blinkin’ drongo.