What does “blow me” mean?

[lenbrazil]

Yeah, the answer seems obvious to me too but an Australian who used the phrase when replying to me in another forum claims that he imagined the expression to be “rather innocent, admittedly quaint” I was not able to find evidence for such a use of the phrase (“blow me” as opposed to “blow me down” or “blow me away” etc.). But of course words and expressions in the same language can mean very different things in countries (e.g. ‘fag’, ‘rubber’ and ‘fanny’).

Questions:

Can “blow me” mean anything else than an invocation to oral sex normally used as an insult (like ‘f%&k you)?

If the phrase does indeed have another meaning, do you think a 40 year-old (or so) Australian could use it in 2006 and be ‘unaware’ of its ‘vulgar’ connotations?

Personally I don’t object to the use of such language (I use it myself) by the guy pretends to be such a prude that he objects to the word “pimping”.

If you want to see the context he told me to “blow” him here (middle of post #16):
educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6655&st=15&p=72145&#entry72145

and we discussed his use of the expression here (starting at post # 20):
educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=7533&view=findpost&p=73059

Len

[lionking]

What does “blow me” mean?

It means to put TNT around you and press on the button ;D (me no terrorist )

[Al Johnston]

The older generation in the UK tend to use it as shorthand for "Well, blow me down with a feather" as an expression of surprise.

I suppose it's becoming less common as knowledge of the alternative interpretation becomes more widely known...

[gillianren]

There is an older slang term of "blow me," yes, but I haven't heard it used in anything more recent than 1930s-era stuff--or historical fiction/documentaries--and it cannot, so far as I can tell, be used as a command. It's more an interjection (or, in the older term, an ejaculation!). However, I really don't think the two could possibly be confused.

[Jason]

Are you just asking us to confirm for you that the guy was insulting you? Why not accept his claim that he wasn't trying to insult you as an apology and continuing with whatever topic you were discussing before the whole thing blew up, so to speak.

[lenbrazil]

jason said:

Are you just asking us to confirm for you that the guy was insulting you?

Since I'm American, I was hoping especially for the input of Australians, Brits and New Zealanders about alternate meanings of the phrase.

Why not accept his claim that he wasn't trying to insult you as an apology and continuing with whatever topic you were discussing before the whole thing blew up, so to speak.

1) He has a habit of being less than straight in his comments and even admitted to being disingenuous before.
2) Our relationship was quite antagonistic before this incident
3) His claim that he meant something else was hardly apologetic.
4) I spoke to a English friend of mine and he told me the phrase could be used to express surprise but he found it hard to believe a Brit. could be unaware of its know more common meaning, though he couldn’t say for sure with an Australian.

[PeterB]

lenbrazil said:

Yeah, the answer seems obvious to me too but an Australian who used the phrase when replying to me in another forum claims that he imagined the expression to be “rather innocent, admittedly quaint” I was not able to find evidence for such a use of the phrase (“blow me” as opposed to “blow me down” or “blow me away” etc.). But of course words and expressions in the same language can mean very different things in countries (e.g. ‘fag’, ‘rubber’ and ‘fanny’).

Questions:

Can “blow me” mean anything else than an invocation to oral sex normally used as an insult (like ‘f%&k you)?

Yes. The expression "Well, I'll be blowed" is sometimes used to express surprise, and is one of a number of slang terms used in Australia which originate in England.

The expression in the way you describe it is (IME) fairly rare in Australia - it's much more of an Americanism.

If the phrase does indeed have another meaning, do you think a 40 year-old (or so) Australian could use it in 2006 and be ‘unaware’ of its ‘vulgar’ connotations?

He might be unaware of its alternate meaning, but I don't know for sure either way. Note that he didn't really use any other obviously American slang, but did use other English slang ("naff") which is very rarely heard in Australia.

Personally I don’t object to the use of such language (I use it myself) by the guy pretends to be such a prude that he objects to the word “pimping”.

I could accept he's telling the truth.

Australian English is a rich and varied version of English. Although people often bemoan the encroachment of Americanisms in Australian English, there are also lots of English expressions which survive in Aussie English, and even some which survive in Aussie English which have died out in England. We've also come up with a lot of our own terms, and adopted quite a few from various Aboriginal languages as well.

[Kiwi]

57-year-old Kiwi here. My mother and most others of her generation often used the expression "blow me" or "blow me down" when I was a kid, but I haven't heard it used for a decade or three now, and have never heard it used with the new meaning mentioned here. It was always just a mild expression of surprise.

On the other hand, Mum often used other very common expressions like crikey, crikey dick, cripes, gosh, and gee, without ever knowing what blasphemies they originally were, and she certainly wouldn't have used them if she knew what they really meant. I learnt their meanings and how they originated from our English teacher, who was English, at high school in 1963. Generally, CRI in anything like that is short for Christ, GO for God, and GE or JE for Jesus. The KEY in the first expression above stands for "kick me."

Recently I bought the DVD of the movie "Bad Blood" starring Aussie's Jack Thompson, about New Zealand's first mass murderer during World War 2, and haven't watched it yet, but well remember when I first saw the movie in a theatre, being intrigued at the old expressions I hadn't heard for a long time. One that really cracked me up, having not heard it since the mid 60s, was, "Bloody drongo!" That meant "idiot."

It's sometimes interesting to investigate the origins of expressions. There was one that I had always considered exclusively Australasian (can't remember exactly what it was now), but on reading a story about a relation's experiences on the Australian goldfields in the 1850s, I found that it had been brought out here at that time by American goldminers.

And yes, I only ever used the expression f*g to mean cigarette, well into the 1970s, and a rubber has always been, right up til now, what others call an eraser. In fact I distinctly remember thinking it was extremely odd when I first learnt that American teenagers often carried "erasers" in their pockets on Saturday nights, because I didn't want anything to do with school on the weekend.

Edited to add:

See, Big Brother has placed the * in the above harmless British-Aussie-Kiwi expression, though I don't know why it didn't also do it in post No. 1.

We've also come up with a lot of our own terms, and adopted quite a few from various Aboriginal languages as well.

Same here in New Zealand with the Maori language, and, of course, the Maori often did a brilliant and sometimes hilarious job of adapting English. I only recently learnt that the "half-pie" I've heard most of my life (but never seen written) is actually "half-pai", a combination of English and Maori. Pai means good, and half-pai usually referred to something half- or only partly-done.