Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) to swear (at), to curse.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		London Minstrel 18: If you cast me off you blast me [...] Pray Goody, please to moderate the rancour of your tongue.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 7: BLAST, to curse.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 114: ’E starts blastin’ an’ buggerin’ an ’all, an’ she says nowt.
1952		(con. 1948) G. Mandel Flee the Angry Strangers 31: Timmy, he likes people should blast ’im.
1964		L. Hairston ‘The Winds of Change’ in Clarke Harlem, USA (1971) 318: I blasted her: ‘Shut your trap a minute.’.
2016		Q. Vidal ‘Third Rail’ 🎵 It’s time to disrespect you / [...] / Oops I blast you.

(b) (also blarst) a euph. for damn v.

1759		O. Goldsmith ‘A Description of Various Clubs’ Coll. Works (1966) III 13: Blast me if I do.
1772		G. Stevens ‘A Pastoral’ Songs Comic and Satyrical 47: In a dust ole I’ll cuddle with thee, / Aye, blast me! though bit by the bugs.
c.1785		‘The Dog and Duck Rig’ in Holloway & Black (1975) I 80: Why blast me! cry they, she’s a beauty, / Who still is in mourning for Jack.
1794		W. Godwin Caleb Williams (1966) 35: But God forever blast his soul.
c.1800		‘Sandman Joe’ No. 23 Papers of Francis Place (1819) n.p.: Why, blast you, Sall, I loves you!
1802		Sporting Mag. Sept. XX 312/1: ‘No,’ says she, ‘I defy anyone to say that Sir Francis Burdett was ever guilty of a reasonable practice in his life’; and bl—t her (for she is apt to swear when in passion) if she believed he ever would.
1819		A.N. Royall Letters from Alabama 10 Mar. 192: Blast him – don’t read any more about him.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) n.p.: Vhen she comes back b—t me if Bill vasn’t a-playing at skittles.
1821–5		‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 13: You’re one of the Johnnie Raws, are you? – and crying too, or blast me!
1833		C.A. Davis Letters of Major J. Downing (1835) 45: Blast their impudence.
1838		Dickens Oliver Twist (1966) 297: Who would have thought it! Blast him, he’d start up from a marble coffin, to come in my way!
1840		W.G. Simms Border Beagles (1855) 336: No, blast my buttons!
1853		Baton Rouge Gaz. (LA) 1 Jan. 1/2: ‘Blast that dog!’ — Take him away!’.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 129: The very day I got there, everlastin blast ’em, the Wilson raiders got there too.
1871		‘George Eliot’ Middlemarch III 143: Blast your ideas! we want the Bill.
1871		Elk Co. Advocate (Ridgway, PA) 16 Mar. 1/5: Blast my buttons, but he’s halmost broke my harm.
1873		W.H. Thomes Slaver’s Adventures 19: ‘Blast them,’ muttered the captain, in an undertone [...] ‘I hope that they will keep their distance, and not throw obstructions in the way of our sailing.’ [Ibid.] 106: Blast me, Fred, but that is a pretty face.
1881		‘Bill Nye’ Bill Nye and Boomerang 121: Blast his picture! Why didn’t he have some style about him.
1888		J. Runciman Chequers 80: Blast yer slobberin’! you ain’t got no more savvey than a blank blank cow.
1892		H. Lawson ‘Jones’s Alley’ in Roderick (1972) 39: Blast papers!
1894		‘Price Warung’ Tales of the Early Days 260: Oh, blast you, blast you! Go away!
1895		Opelousas Courier (LA) 10 Aug.2/4: Blast my buttons if that farm ain’t the talk of the whole entre country.
1899		Illus. Police Budget 28 Jan. 2/2: ‘Blast him! [...] If he’d been my own brother I’d have sliced his throttle-pipe’.
1900		J. Conrad Lord Jim 215: As if he couldn’t have said ‘Hands off my plunder!’ blast him! That would have been like a man.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 26/2: Blast you, Foley, can’t ye teach me same as ye teach Lang?
1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 134: I had enough of your doctoring at the Yellow Tank—blast you!
1907		Gem 6 Apr. 4: I’m blast if I know.
1910		‘O. Henry’ ‘The Day Resurgent’ in Strictly Business (1915) 51: Why, blast my skylights! I know what he was driving at now.
1916		C.J. Dennis ‘War’ in Moods of Ginger Mick 24: ’E grouches there ten minutes, maybe more, / Then sez quite sudden, ‘Blarst the flamin’ war!’.
1916		Goodwin’s Wkly (Salt Lake City, UT) 5 Aug. 6/2: God blast me! Strike me blind and lay me out if I said a single word about you!
1918		‘Sapper’ Human Touch 8: I hates them, and a lady come down to-day and give me a track. Blarst her!
1922		Joyce Ulysses 403: Hell, blast ye! Scoot.
1926		K.S. Prichard Working Bullocks 241: Blarst them and their saws. Blarst ’em!
1935		D. Lamson We Who Are About to Die 213: God damn and blast you, you black bastard.
1936		D. Stivens Tramp and Other Stories 23: Blast the swaggies!
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 130: Damn and blast the filthy rogue!
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 33: He put me onto a Good Thing. He did, blast him.
1945		G. Fairlie Capt. Bulldog Drummond 21: Do you know what they told me, blast ’em?
1946		G. Gibson Enemy Coast Ahead (1955) 36: No such luck. She hummed along like a sewing machine, blast her.
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 26: Blast that Ursula, I wish to God we could get someone else on the desk.
1960		(con. c.1918) D. Holman-Hunt My Grandmothers and I (1987) 21: Blast the blinkin’ bell.
1986		J.B. Keane Bodhrán Makers 188: Blasht me for an ape!
1988		J. Healy Grass Arena (1990) 41: God blast it to hell, nice legs indeed. Is that all you be thinking of?

(c) to scold, to criticize; to vilify.

1850		(con. 1843) Melville White-Jacket (1990) 337: Don’t blast me any more, for Heaven’s sake. Blast my jacket you may, and I’ll join you in that; but don’t blast me.
1856		H.B. Stowe Dred I 241: She blasts at him every time he comes here, and he blasts at her.
1879		Cincinnati Enquirer 7 Sept. 10/7: Back-cap, Blast–Is to speak ill of a person or play, the former being the term most generally used, and we regret to say with much cause, for among no other class of people [i.e. actors] does the tendency to back-cap exist.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 4 July 9/2: Nick Feuillade never reads the daily papers, let alone the weekly ones, so that (so far as he’s concerned) it is all one whether he’s beslavered or blasted.
1937		(con. 1905–25) E.H. Sutherland Professional Thief (1956) 94: The court realized that the victim had been reached (fixed) and started to blast him.
1938		R.L Bellem ‘Grappling Trilby’ in Popular Sports June n.p.: I’ll blast hell out of you. Not only for graft—but for murder.
1960		J. Brosnan Long Season (1975) 105: Your wife says he’s been blastin’ you.
1961		F. O’Connor An Only Child (1970) 38: I blasted him for not wiring for me.
1962		(con. 1953–7) L. Yablonsky Violent Gang (1967) 115: It became a juggling act to blast Duke in front of his boys and yet maintain my relationship with him.
1968		K. Brasselle Cannibals 194: When he’d blasted me once before, I’d had Irving call his brown-nose announcer and warn him.
1977		Rolling Stone 22 Sept. 43: You were someone we told the story to, and you’re going up there and blasting into him like that.
2012		Cecil Whig (Elkton, MD) 31 Oct. 5: ‘President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick [...] must end.’ She blasted [...] Obama for his response.

(d) to complain.

1975

D. Goines Inner City Hoodlum 25: The shippers and freighters are blasting about this one.

(a) (orig. US) to shoot a gun.

1929		E. Booth Stealing Through Life 302: Had to throw a slug or let him out [...] and we was too near through to start blasting.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Earthquake’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 161: Earthquake outs with the old equalizer and starts blasting away at the coppers.
1936		(ref. to 1920s) L. Duncan Over the Wall 239: Let’s make a go of it and blast it out with the two guards.
1939		R. Chandler Big Sleep 170: Go ahead and blast and see what it gets you.
1943		R. Chandler Lady in the Lake (1952) 153: Pull over, or we’ll blast a hole in you!
1946		J. Evans Halo in Blood (1988) 47: Only a hophead would do any blasting where we were.
1950		‘Hal Ellson’ Tomboy (1952) 93: He blasted with his snubnose and watched the rival gang break and run.
1967		W. Murray Sweet Ride 13: He’d blast away [...] He’d shoot to kill.
1968		J. Alard He Who Shoots Last 14: ‘I wuz in on da job but I didn’t do da blastin’’.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 20: ‘When Ronnie started blasting, I took off’.
1988		NWA ‘Fuck Tha Police’ 🎵 I blast / On a stupid-ass nigga when I’m playing with the trigga.
1993		Dr Dre ‘187’ 🎵 So if you wanna blast, nigga we can buck ’em.
1999		Dr Dre ‘Murder Ink’ 🎵 Blast two shots to the dome, slide back to the pad / and jack my nigga off, til his dick get soft.
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 7: When some niggers do come in blasting, your big ass be in the way and shit, two, three motherfuckers can hide behind you.

(b) (orig. US, also blast up) to shoot or kill someone with a gun; thus blast job n., a murder.

1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 30: Blast.—To shoot; to assassinate.
1933		Ersine Und. and Prison Sl.
1937		W.M. Raine Cool Customer 59: He didn’t want to be blasted down when they poured a volley into us.
1939		R. Chandler ‘Trouble Is My Business’ in Spanish Blood (1946) 190: We don’t blast him. Not today.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 130: Two days later he blasted Johnny Abate.
1953		‘Curt Cannon’ ‘The Death of Me’ in I Like ’Em Tough (1958) 100: I don’t want any part of a blast job.
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1968) 37: Walked past the cocktail lounge where they blasted the Jai Lai bookie.
1960		E. De Roo Big Rumble 82: [They] all kept their eyes on Larry as if they expected him to blast them. ‘You got that heater with ya tonight?’.
1969		M. Puzo Godfather 145: Maybe we should let Mike blast whoever is in the car.
1974		V.E. Smith Jones Men 202: They blasts this clown.
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 313: Fucker blasted me with a sawed-off.
1993		K. Scott Monster (1994) 145: Yo’ punk-ass homies blasted me up.
1995		J. Cameron Vinnie Got Blown Away 81: I was with Ronnie Good when he decked the geezers then Jimmy Foley when he got blasted.
2000		Guardian 20 Apr. 3: Fen people would have blasted them anyway.
2018-20		T. Thorne (ed.) ‘Drill Slang Glossary’ at Forensic Linguistic Databank 🌐 Blast — shoot.

(a) (drugs) to smoke a marijuana or hashish cigarette.

1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 32: The air got hot (and the gage was right), as the Skulls kept blasting away.
1952		J.C. Holmes Go 125: Hell, you should come along though and blast with us!
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1968) 30: I blasted my last stick of Tangier tea.
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 113: I got some sticks [...] you wanna blast?
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 59: Soon there’s no noise except the music and the steady hiss of cats blasting away on kick-sticks.
1967		I. Rosenthal Sheeper 278: I blasted pot for two months.
2000		(con. 1940s–60s) Décharné Straight from the Fridge Dad.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 20/1: blast (also blast up) v. 2 to smoke marijuana.

(b) (US) to go completely mad (esp. under the influence of drugs).

1952		Kerouac letter 3 June in Charters I (1995) 365: I eat peotl, and blast, and drink pure pulque from an urn.
1963		C. Cooper Jr ‘Yet Princes Follow’ in Black! (1996) 190: I blasted then, really blew my wig!

(c) to take narcotics.

1957		Kerouac On The Road (1972) 150: Man, he’d be blasting with every mad cat he could find.
1963		M. Spillane Return of the Hood 18: I didn’t know this big coot blasted any?
1990		Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Blast. To inject heroin. As in ‘to have a blast’.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 20/1: blast (also blast up) v. 1 to inject intravenous drugs.
2012		L. Redhead ‘Grassed’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] ‘You want to blast it [i.e. methamphetamine]?’ [...] ‘Whoa [...] Nobody’s using needles in my studio’.

(d) to give someone an injection.

1981

M. Baker Nam (1982) 169: If he even looked like he was coming round, I just blasted him.

(e) (drugs) to smoke crack cocaine.

1993		R. Shell Iced 112: I can’t even get a wake-up hit now, ’cause I blasted myelf sideways last night.
2001		ONDCP Street Terms 3: Blast — [...] smoke marijuana or crack.

(a) (US) to play music passionately.

1967		A. Baraka Tales (1969) 77: He blasted all night, crawled and leaped.
1971		E. Wilson (ref. to 1938) Show Business Nobody Knows 159: B.G. [Benny Goodman] believes that [...] January 16, 1938, was the first time integrated musicians ever appeared on the concert stage in New York. He wasn’t yet thirty years old when he walked out on stage [...] and lifted his clarinet to start the blasting.

(b) (US) to drive fast.

1971		L. Bangs in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 63: Blasting down the streets in a souped-up shitcan with some zit-grinnin buddies.
1973		S. Ace Stand On It (1979) 152: They were both blasting down this little two-laner.
1977		S. McAughtry Sinking of the Kenbane Head 34: Mart blasted the ball about seventy yards.

(c) (orig. US black/teen) to play a record or radio (loudly).

1992		D. Burke Street Talk 2 2: My mom always bags on me ’cause I blast the stereo.
2000		Lehr & O’Neill Black Mass 188: Bulger blasted the stereo and television once Flemmi arrived.
2014		D.B. Flowers Bangs 162: Bangs also instructed Clemente [...] to blast the radio to make it appear as if he were home.