BY-BLOW • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of By-blow

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/baɪ-bloʊ/ Listen

noun

By-blow n.

A side or incidental blow; an accidental blow. "With their by-blows they did split the very stones in pieces."

An illegitimate child; a bastard. "The Aga speedily... brought her (his disgraced slave) to court, together with her pretty by-blow, the present Padre Ottomano."

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Etymology of 'By-blow'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"By-blow" Quotes from Famous Books

... putrifying body, on which any kind of seminal or vital principle chances to be cast, become somewhat more then meerly a nursing and fostering helper in the generation and production of any kind of Animate body, the more neer it approaches the true nature of a Womb, the more power will it have on the by-blow it incloses. But of this somewhat more in the description of the Water-gnat. Perhaps some more accurate Enquiries and Observations about these matters might bring the Question to some certainty, which would be of no small concern ...

— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... child on the 16th of January, 1696-7, who was baptized on the Monday following, the 18th, and registered by the name of Richard, the son of John Smith, by Mr. Burbridge; and, from the privacy, was supposed by Mr. Burbridge to be "a by-blow or bastard."' It also appears, that during her delivery, the lady wore a mask; and that Mary Pegler, on the next day after the baptism, took a male child, whose mother was called Madam Smith, from the house of Mrs. Pheasant, in Fox Court ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... without help of wars or bloodshed. At the first we all hailed it, as hardening the roads, which for a month had been nigh impassable: and either commander took speedy advantage of it—Hopton to make a swift diversion into Sussex and capture Arundel Castle (which was but a by-blow, for in a few weeks he had lost it again), and our own general to post up with his short, quick legs to London, where in two days he had wrung from Essex good reinforcements, with promise of pay for the troops and a ...

— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch