Also 7 blebb. [app. like BLOB and BLUBBER, from the action of making a bubble with the lips. In relation to blob, bleb expresses a smaller swelling; cf. top, tip, etc.]
1. A blister or small swelling on the skin; also a similar swelling on plants.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 319. Wingals … be little swellings like blebs or bladders, on either side the joynt.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 174. The blebs or blisters we find on the leaves of many Trees and Shrubs.
1876. Duhring, Dis. Skin, 228. Blebs may occur in the place of vesicles.
fig. 1651. More, Enthus. Triumph (1656), 180. You blebs of venery, you bags of filth!
2. A bubble of air in water, glass, or other substance at some time fluid.
1647. H. More, Song of Soul, Notes 165/2. Dancing blebs and bubbles in the water.
1716. Desaguliers, in Phil. Trans., XXIX. 447. The Lens ought to be … without Veins or Blebs.
1861. Furnivall, San Graal (Roxb.), Pref. 8. A … green vessel … showing by a bleb in it that it was of glass.
3. A vesicular body.
1775. Ellis, in Phil. Trans., LXVI. 15, note. The cell-like divisions … are only a row of single blebs of pith. Ibid., Clayton, ibid., 105. From the surface oozes out a gum in round blebs.
1880. J. E. Burton, Handbk. Midwives, § 38. 25. The ovum, or egg, is at first a little bladder, or bleb.
