blotto

comparative more blotto · superlative most blotto

1. informal(Very) drunk or intoxicated.First known use early 20th c.

   I stayed home for a couple days and got blotto four times. I did the usual bad drunk routine; cried a lot, moaned about my life.

   2014, Kim Cayer, chapter 4, in Lights! Camera! Dissatisfaction …, Alresford, Hampshire: Roundfire Books, John Hunt Publishing, →ISBN

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   Dear old Squiffy was always rather a lad for the wassail-bowl. When I met him in Paris, I remember, he was quite tolerably blotto.

   1920 March – 1921 February, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “Mr. Roscoe Sherriff has an Idea”, in Indiscretions of Archie, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published 1921, →OCLC, page 62

   I drank a lot of wine – and afterwards, at Les Vikings, Akvavit – and was completely blotto (well, not completely, but enough to talk a lot and get the Hungarian talking and not be bored).

   1939 September 8, Simone de Beauvoir, “September 1939 – March 1940: The Phoney War”, in Quintin Hoare, transl., Letters to Sartre, New York, N.Y.: Arcade Publishing, published 2011, →ISBN, pages 46–47

   Synonyms: Adrian Quist, adrip, aled up, all mops and brooms, arseholed, a sheet in the wind, a sheet in the wind's eye, bedrunken

plural blottos · plural blottoes

1. informalA person who is (very) drunk or intoxicated.

   Remember, Blanche DuBois was a blotto and her trip to New Orleans didn't get her anywhere. Nuff said.

   1979, Margaret Oberman, Doug Steckler, I Could Have Been a Contender: Or, The Other Book of Lists, New York, N.Y.: Avon, →ISBN, page 102

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   His [Joe Jonsson's] drawings and rollicking humor about burglars, cardsharps, turf punters, jockeys and "blottos" (drunks) were a continuation in theme of the work of the early Bulletin artists Alf Vincent and Ambrose Dyson.

   1983, Maurice Horn, editor, The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, volumes 3 (Gia–Mau), New York, N.Y.: Chelsea House Publishers, →ISBN, page 326, column 1

   These borderlines are outnumbered more than five to one by the "blottos," drivers with BACs [blood alcohol concentrations] of 0.20 and higher. Put this 0.08 idea to the commonsense test: We're going to improve highway safety with a program aimed at a few "borderlines," while five times as many "blottos" continue their boozy ways? It'll never work.

   1999, Car and Driver, volume 45, New York, N.Y.: Hachette Magazines, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 26

   Behind the lighted displays of bottles, the smudged wall mirror reflected hazy red pool table lights and the words Dino's: Getting Vegas Drunk Since 1962 in large white letters on a back wall. His old man had groused when they had first painted that sign. "Makes the place sound like a bunch of blottos."

   2013, Colleen Collins, chapter 2, in Sleepless in Las Vegas (Harlequin Super Romance), Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Enterprises, →ISBN, page 23

2. artAn artwork created using blots of ink or paint.

   One can object to a few of the crafts included—paper punch pictures, blottos and metal foil sculpture—because they are more likely to lead to "tricks" than to art.

   1955, Craft Horizons, volume 15, New York, N.Y.: American Craft Council, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 49

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   The authors' most penetrating work seems to me, their contribution along the lines of the interview with the child, the use of sketches, blottoes, etc. "Draw a picture of this house. Who lives there? Show where the different members sleep" […]

   1932, Public Health Reviews, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Division of Hygiene and Public Health, University of Michigan, →OCLC

   The pictures on these cards which I am going to show you are such ink-blot pictures. They do not really represent anything. They are accidental blottos. All you have to do is to look at them one by one and tell me what they might be, what they could represent for you.

   1942, Bruno Klopfer, Douglas McGlashan Kelley, “Appendix to Part Three”, in The Rorschach Technique: A Manual for a Projective Method of Personality Diagnosis, Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book Company, →OCLC, page 292

   The ink splattered blottoes on the wall. The door closed precipitately. Screaming, "Told those monkeys to stay out unless I said come in!" The door opened and the jet brunette with the perfect profile minced in wearing a look of critical suffering.

   1946, Theodora Du Bois, Death Sails in a High Wind, London: T[homas] V[olney] Boardman & Co., →OCLC, page 134

   She feels that whatever they absorb of the basic fundamentals of art will be valuable in later life. Even a knowledge of balanced colors may be a help later in decorating a home. She starts them simply with ordinary "blottos." "Then they learn perspective, and the various techniques. I try to take them through as many as possible; water color, crayons, charcoal, tempera, and india ink, casein—everything but oil."

   1963, Themis of Zeta Tau Alpha, volume 62, number 1, Menasha, Wis.: Zeta Tau Alpha, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 19, column 3

   Under the topic of Color, creative writing students will create blottos, using the primary colors; will listen for "color" in a familiar song and then write their own words; and, with the help of resource people from Mesabi Community College, will attempt to show color through facial expression […]

   1974, Minnesota Elementary School Principal, St. Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Elementary School Principals' Association, →OCLC, page 132, column 1

present singular third person blottos · present singular third person blottoes · participle present blottoing · participle past blottoed · past blottoed

1. informalintransitiveTo become or cause to become (very) drunk or intoxicated.

   An entire bottle would have blottoed me. I marvel how Leigh managed to give my name to the manager.

   1994, Grif Stockley, Religious Conviction (Ivy Books Fiction), New York, N.Y.: Ivy Books, →ISBN, page 266

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   Wherever distilled spirits dominate over beer or wine, this nocturnal culture emerges, and with it the kind of alcoholism that never plateaus but merely blottoes, retreating into a night of its own and sometimes remaining there for a week at a time. You witness this among Poles, Russians, Swedes and Finns, all of whom are expert blottologists.

   2006 June 12, Roger Scruton, “Southern Comfort”, in New Statesman, volume 135, London: New Statesman Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 58, column 3

   Ever since that first shag, his grades and interest in school had plummeted like a sad sack of stones. When they added alcohol and dope to that, using them until they blottoed out, doing well at school and getting a good job went out the fucking window.

   2012, Albert Wendt, “Absences”, in Ancestry, Wellington: Huia Publishers, →ISBN

2. informalintransitiveTo be annihilated or destroyed; to be blotted out.

   [H]is soul, spinning in centrifugal lust and fury until he sputters out through the hole in the center of him; going down like a gas bag—vault, cellar, ribs, skin, blood, tissue, mind, and heart all consumed, devoured, blottoed in final annihilation.

   1936, Henry Miller, “Megalopolitan Maniac”, in Black Spring, Paris: The Obelisk Press […], →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1963, →ISBN, page 241

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   John Huston provides a few of the worst moments himself, or, at least, his tape editor does it for him by bumblingly patching on Huston's voice in one series of spot announcements—Jehovah himself dictating Creation to the sounds of [Toshiro] Mayuzumi's fade-in, fade-out neo-primordial slither. Even for what it is, the music is badly performed, poorly recorded, and blottoed by a veritable orgy of editing and dial diddling.

   1967, Hi Fi/Stereo Review, volume 18, Chicago, Ill.: Ziff-Davis Pub. Co., →OCLC, page 93

   I recently read The Destruction of Dresden. That's where my family came from more than a hundred years ago, and the entire city was blottoed during the second world war. And then I looked up the city in a current Fodor's guide, and it is—at least along the Elbe—all back the way it was before the war.

   1995, Historic Preservation: Quarterly of the National Council for Historic Sites and Buildings, volume 47, Washington, D.C.: National Council for Historic Sites and Buildings, →OCLC, page 112, column 3

   Although his facts were off by a measure, the Americans' two-man Gemini program was, as of late, noticeably and distressingly upstaging whatever grand spectacles [Sergei] Korolev had managed to bring about. He was getting trounced. Blottoed. Pummeled like the chump in a rigged boxing match.

   2009, Jay Gallentine, “The Death and the Funeral”, in Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft (Outward Odyssey: A People’s History of Spaceflight), Lincoln, Neb.; London: University of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 292

alternative Blotto

1. uncountablebiochemistryA reagent made from non-fat dry milk, phosphate buffered saline, and sodium azide, which is used to block protein binding sites for laboratory techniques such as blots and the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

   Generalized background staining of colostral cell preparations was blocked most effectively with Blotto + 10% FBS.

   2007, Anna Levitt Smith, Detection of Bovine Leukemia Virus in Density-separated Bovine Colostral Cells (unpublished M.S. dissertation), [Davis, Calif.]: University of California, Davis, →OCLC, page 40

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   Secondary goat anti-rabbit antiserum coupled to horseradish peroxidase at a dilution of 1:500 in blotto was then incubated with the blot for 1 hour. Again the unbound antibodies were removed by three rinses in 10% blotto for 15 minutes.

   2006, Kimberly Kay Kutz-Naber, Mass Spectral Characterization of Neuropeptides in Cancer Crabs: Method Development and Biological Application (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation), [Madison, Wis.]: University of Wisconsin–Madison, →OCLC, page 236

   Following transfer, the PVDF membrane was removed from the transfer cassette and placed in a sandwich tray and incubated in 20ml blotto (1×tBST, 7% nonfat dry milk and 0.1% Tween-20 pH 7.4) for 1 h while rocking.

   2007, Jeffery Ray Williams, Alternate Substrates and Phosphorylation in the Function and Regulation of the Neuronal K-C1 Cotransporter, KCC2 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation), [Davis, Calif.]: University of California, Davis, →OCLC, page 69

   Membranes were blocked at RT for 2 h with blotto [50 mM Tris pH 7.5, 0.185 mM NaCl, 0.05% Tween-20, 3% nonfat dry milk]. Ape1 monoclonal antibody developed in our laboratory (Novus Biologicals, Littleton, CO, USA) was diluted in blotto and incubated with the membrane overnight at 4°C (1:1000).

   2009 April, Christopher N. Batuello, Mark R. Kelley, Joseph R. Dynlacht, “Role of Ape1 and Base Excision Repair in the Radiation Response and Heat-radiosensitization of HeLa Cells”, in Anticancer Research, volume 29, number 4, →ISSN, →PMID, page 1320, column 1

plural blottos

1. obsoletenauticalOn Sulawesi: a hollowed-out tree trunk used as a boat.

   The Poso, entering the Gulf of Tomini, is wide and navigable by blottos up to Paluasi, but is full of rapids above.

   1920, “Physical Geography and Geology”, in Geographical Section of the Naval Intelligence Division, Naval Staff, Admiralty, compiler, A Manual of Netherlands India (Dutch East Indies) (I.D.; 1209), London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, →OCLC, page 53

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   The canoes that are in common use on the lake are of the most primitive and unstable type. They simply consist of a semi-cylinder, hollowed out of a tree stem, with the ends filled up with mud and grass. These canoes are called blotto or ballotto by the natives. […] They are of every size, from the child's blotto of ten or fifteen feet in length to the fisherman's craft of fifty.

   1889, Sydney J[ohn] Hickson, “Journey through Minahassa”, in A Naturalist in North Celebes: […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 217

   The agent of the Packet Company is ready to give information about it, and to look after the hiring of horses and blottos.

   1897, J[ohan] F[rans] van Bemmelen, G. B. Hooyer, translated by B. J. Berrington, Guide to the Dutch East Indies: Composed by Invitation of the Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij (Royal Steam Packet Company), Batavia: G. Kolff & Co.; London: Luzac & Company, →OCLC, page 153

   The Poso River flows out from the large lake of that name,[…]. The mouth is shallow, but inside the depths are 3 to 7 fathoms, and in the dry season Rumuru can be reached in “blottos” (hollowed-out tree trunks) in about two days. In the rainy season the current is strong. Rumuru is the junction of many paths from the interior, along which forest produce is conveyed and then shipped in "blottos."

   1916, “South, East, and North Coasts of Celebes—Salayar and Buton Straits—Tukang, Besi, Banggai, and Sula Islands”, in East Indies Pilot: […] (H. O.; no. 163), volume I, number 163, Washington, D.C.: Published by the Hydrographic Office under the authority of the Secretary of the Navy; Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 425

1. uncountableAlternative letter-case form of blotto (“reagent used to block protein binding sites for laboratory techniques”).

   Generalized background staining of colostral cell preparations was blocked most effectively with Blotto + 10% FBS.

   2007, Anna Levitt Smith, Detection of Bovine Leukemia Virus in Density-separated Bovine Colostral Cells (unpublished M.S. dissertation), [Davis, Calif.]: University of California, Davis, →OCLC, page 40