blowy

blow +‎ -y

blowy (comparative blowier, superlative blowiest)

1. Windy or breezy.
   • 1789, John O’Keeffe, Modern Antiques; or, The Merry Mourners, Act II, Scene 3, in The Dramatic Works of John O’Keeffe, London, 1798, Volume I, p. 351,

     All my doors open! this blowy night! reminds me of the Lisbon earthquake; but my storm-cap has protected me.

   • 1910, Rudyard Kipling, “Gloriana”, in Rewards and Fairies‎:

     […] one blowy July afternoon, as they were going up for a potato-roast, they saw somebody moving among the trees.

   • 1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night: A Romance, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC; republished as chapter I, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night: A Romance [...] With the Author’s Final Revisions, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, →OCLC, book II (Rosemary’s Angle: 1919–1925), page 55:

     … This ship is nice, with our heels hitting the deck together. This is the blowy corner and each time we turn it I slant forward against the wind and pull my coat together without losing step with Dick.

   • 1946, Mervyn Peake, “Flay Brings a Message”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode:

     Why can’t you stay in when the weather is muddy and blowy?

   • 2014, Guy Nowell, “RMSIR 2014 — Penang to Langkawi. An espresso race,” sail-world.com, 21 November, 2014,

     Equally almost traditional is that this is the blowiest leg of the regatta.

2. Billowy, blowing or waving in the wind. (of fabric, hair, etc.)
   • 2012, Dawn French, chapter 16, in Oh Dear Silvia, Penguin:

     […] I remember now. You had the sun behind you, filtering through your amazing blowy hair, red hair […]

   • 2013 October 17, Hua Hsu, “King of Hong Kong: Johnnie To and the violent, inventive evolution of H.K. cinema”, in Grantland:

     A panoramic view of all the lives ruined by the financial markets, from the midlevel banker just trying to meet her monthly quota to the overly loyal gangster who doesn’t realize that loud, blowy Hawaiian shirts are the opposite of subtle.

3. Susceptible to drifting. (of soil)
   • 1929, U.S. Department of Agriculture Radio Service, Office of Information, Farm Science Snapshots, 19 October, 1929,

     And fall plowing except on blowy soils also will be good for the spring sown crops.

   • 1938, Angus Henry McDonald, Erosion and its Control in Oklahoma Territory, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication No. 301, p. 17,

     Some farmers, however, quit raising cowpeas on blowy land, because they claimed it aggravated drifting.

blowy (plural blowies)

1. Alternative spelling of blowie