blower

Noun

1. A person who blows.
2. A fissure from which firedamp issues, often in quantity for many years.
   • The great sources of fire-damp in coal mines are blowers or fissures from which currents of this inflammable gas issue in considerable quantities and for a long series of years - 1843, Humphry Davy, “On the fire-damp of...

   Synonyms: feeder

3. Any device that blows; often, especially, a furnace component or a supercharger.
   • The locomotive […] was quietly "blowing off" on one Ross "pop" valve, whilst the rhythmic clanging of the fireman's shovel, the black smoke pouring from her chimney, and the harsh sound of the blower told of the...

   1. A ducted fan, usually part of a heating, ventilation, and/or air conditioning system.

      • The three motors on each bogie are force ventilated from a blower mounted in the adjacent nose-end compartment of the superstructure, the air being led by ducts and flexible bellows connections to the air inlet at the...
4. Telephone.
   • Get on the blower and call headquarters right away!
   • I got off the blower oozing no confidence at all. - 1995, Paul Vautin, Turn It Up!, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 144:

   1. (slang, UK, Ireland, historical) A telephone service providing betting odds and commentary, relayed to customers in a bookmaker's shop via loudspeaker.

5. A braggart, or loud talker.
   • There hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbosom. I am continually lost at the absence of blowing and blowers among...
6. The whale; so called from its habit of spouting up a column of water.
7. A small fish of the Atlantic coast, Sphoeroides maculatus; the puffer.
8. A gun.