blizzard (blizard)

[An expre ive word, originating in the United States, appar. at first locally on the Atlantic coast (see first quot.), and carried thence to the West, where, in a new application, it came into general notice and use in the winter of 1880-81. The word is evidently a popular formation, and is prob. based, with the usual imitative variation observable in such formations, on what to the popular consciousne is the common root of blaze, blast, blow (the latter notions at least being appar. present in the familiar third sense). In the orig. sense a blizzard is e entially a " blazer," of which word, indeed, it may be considered a manipulated form: see blazel, and cf. blaze2, blast, bluster.] 1. [Appar. the earliest sense, but not recorded, except in the figurative use, until recently.] A general discharge of guns; a rattling volley; a general "blazing away." See extract. Along the Atlantic coast, among the gunners who often hunt in parties stationed near together behind blinds, waiting for the flocks of migratory birds, the word bliz zard means a general discharge of all the guns, nearly but not quite together-a rattling volley, differing from a broadside in not being quite simultaneous. This use of the word is familiar to every 'longshore man from Sandy Hook to Currituck, and goes back at least forty years, as my own memory attests. The longshore men of 590