blast

Noun (1)

blast (countable and uncountable, plural blasts)

1. A violent gust of wind (in windy weather) or apparent wind (around a moving vehicle).
   • And see where surly Winter passes off, / Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts; / His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill.a. 1749 (date written), James Thomson, “Spring”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, →OCLC
   • Their warm, thick under covering of fine wool protects them from the coldest blasts.1915 April, Enos A. Mills, “Wild Mountain Sheep”, in The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 37
2. A forcible stream of gas or liquid from an orifice, for example from a bellows, the tuyeres of a blast furnace, a person's mouth, etc.
3. A hit of a recreational drug from a pipe.
4. The continuous blowing to which one charge of ore or metal is subjected in a furnace.
   • Many tons of iron were melted at a blast.
   • Blast was produced by bellows worked by four 'blowers', three of whom worked at a time while the fourth stood ready to replace one of the others.1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 146
5. The exhaust steam from an engine, driving a column of air out of a boiler chimney, and thus creating an intense draught through the fire; also, any draught produced by the blast.
6. An explosion, especially for the purpose of destroying a mass of rock, etc.
   • arc blast
   • She caught the full impact of the blast.
7. A direct and fast swing of a bat; a home run.
8. A verbal attack or punishment; a severe criticism or reprimand.
   • My manager gave me a blast yesterday for coming in late.
   • P. S.—I gave the P. O. Department a blast in the papers about sending misdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, and got a blast in return, through a New York daily, from the New York postmaster.1917 [1874], Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's letters, volume 1, page 226
9. An explosive charge for blasting.
   • Large blasts are often used.1852-1854, Charles Tomlinson, Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts
10. (countable) A loud, sudden sound.
    • One blast upon his bugle horn / Were worth a thousand men.1810, Walter Scott, “(please specify the canto number or page)”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and...
    • the blast of triumph o'er thy gravec. 1832, William Cullen Bryant, The Battle-Field
11. (uncountable) Unwanted noise from a microphone.
    • […] the microphone has been unostentatiously working out its own destiny here and abroad, mainly in America. Evolution seems to be most promising (in the elimination of "microphone blast" and background noises — common faults of the earlier types) in the direction of the electrostatic, or...1969, The Realist: A Journal of Scientific Humanism, page 67
12. A sudden pernicious effect, as if by a noxious wind, especially on animals and plants; a blight.
    • By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 4:9
    • Vertue preferd from fell deſtuctions blaſt,c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry...

Verb (1)

blast (third-person singular simple present blasts, present participle blasting, simple past and past participle blasted)

1. (transitive) To make an impression on, by making a loud blast or din.
   • Trumpeters, / With brazen din blast you the city's ear.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
2. (intransitive) To make a loud noise.
3. (informal, transitive) To play (music) very loudly out of a speaker.
   • Some kid is in his car blasting rap. You know, bass in the trunk and you can hear it 4 blocks away? I signal over to him and say "Hey, turn it up, I can't hear it." He turns around and says, "Shut Up Grandpa."2008 April 24, neilc...@yahoo.com, “ARRMO FEST”, in alt.rock-n-roll.metal.oldschool (Usenet)
   • There was no flutter of claws requiring me to blast a tape.2022, Quiara Alegría Hudes, My Broken Language, Random House Publishing Group
4. (transitive) To shatter, as if by an explosion.
   • Although Maroczy favored solid, positional chess, there were times when he changed his style and blasted his opponents' defenses to bits.1951 July, Hans Kmoch, “Geza Maroczy 1870-1951”, in Chess Review
5. (transitive) To open up a hole in, usually by means of a sudden and imprecise method (such as an explosion).
   • Blast right through it.
6. (transitive) To curse; to damn.
   • Blast it! Foiled again.
   • We are told that he [the serpent] was more subtle than any beast of the field; did he really show his sagacity by blasting man's prospects without improving his own?1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 1, page 49
7. (transitive) To shoot, especially with an energy weapon (as opposed to one which fires projectiles).
   • Chewbacca blasted the Stormtroopers with his laser rifle.
8. To shoot; kick the ball in hope of scoring a goal.
   • A Ricketts and Stuart Holden one-two around the box then created a decent chance for an almost instant equaliser - but Welsh full-back Ricketts blasted over when a calmer finish could have been rewarded.2010 December 29, Chris Whyatt, “Chelsea 1 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC
9. (ambitransitive, slang, African-American Vernacular) To shoot; to attack or shoot (someone or a place).
   • They showed up blasting.
   • That's when we decided to blast him.
10. (transitive) To criticize or reprimand severely; to verbally discipline or punish.
    • My manager suddenly blasted me yesterday for being a little late to work for five days in a row, because I was never getting myself up on time.
    • John Cassavetes and New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael have never seen eye to eye on his films. According to the director, "She's blasted every one of my films except A Woman Under the Influence, which she couldn't quite bring herself to pan because it was a story about a woman. So she blasted...1976, Karen Stabiner, “Cassavetes: Hollywood's Loner”, in Mother Jones, volume 1, number 3, page 64

    Synonyms:

    admonish, animadvert, bash, bawl out, tilt, cannonade, slash, lash, blame, scorch

11. (transitive) To bring destruction or ruin on; to destroy.
    • Oh Portius, is there not some choſen Curſe,
      Some hidden Thunder in the Stores of Heav’n,
      Red with uncommon Wrath, to blaſt the Man
      Who owes his Greatneſs to his Country’s Ruin?1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 2
    • Both Leo and myself rushed to her - she was stone dead - blasted into death by some mysterious electric agency or overwhelming will-force whereof the dread She had command.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
12. (transitive) To blight or wither.
    • A cold wind blasted the rose plants.

Interjection

1. (UK, informal, mildly blasphemous) Used to show anger or disappointment: damn
   • Now, where's my Labour membership card, so I can consider whether to tear it up? Blast, it's plastic...2025 February 19, Christian Wolmar, “Reeves talks of 'growth' but pays lip service to the railway”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 35

Noun (2)

blast (plural blasts)

1. An immature or undifferentiated cell (e.g., lymphoblast, myeloblast).

Verb (2)

blast (third-person singular simple present blasts, present participle blasting, simple past and past participle blasted)

1. (informal, transitive) To run a nucleotide sequence (for nucleic acids) or an amino acid sequence (for proteins) through a BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool).
   • Blasting nucleotide sequences is not always that easy, because there is more ambiguity to the nucleotide sequence, and good hits have to have a 70% homology over the whole sequence to be reliable, compared to 25% with proteins.2004, Andreas Bommarius, Bettina Riebel-Bommarius, Biocatalysis: Fundamentals and Applications, page 425

Proper noun capitalized: BLAST

BLAST

1. An algorithm which compares similarities between sequences of nucleotides in nucleic acids or of amino acids in proteins.

Verb (3) capitalized: BLAST

BLAST (third-person singular simple present BLASTs, present participle BLASTing, simple past and past participle BLASTed)

1. (informal, transitive) Alternative letter-case form of blast (to run a sequence through BLAST)
   • This program is also capable of BLASTing sequencing results and works with most automated sequencing formats, alleviating the need for conversion of PC-based files.2006, Guy Caldwell, Shelli Williams, Kim Caldwell, Integrated Genomics: A Discovery-Based Laboratory Course, page 85