adj. (old).—Execrable; confounded; often substituted for ‘damned,’ ‘bloody,’ as a milder form, BLASTED FELLOW = an abandoned rogue, BLASTED BRIMSTONE = a prostitute (GROSE).
1682. DRYDEN, Medal, 260. What curses on thy BLASTED name will fall.
1750. CHESTERFIELD, Letters, 8 Jan. (1870), 169. Colonel Chartres … who was, I believe, the most notorious BLASTED rascal in the world.
1874. PUSEY, Lent. Sermons, 79. Balaam after the success of his BLASTED counsel.
1884. J. PURVES, Moles and Mole Catching, in Good Words, xxv. Nov., 767, col. 1. My authority, old Jim Black, states that the ‘BLASTED’ railway has done away with those journeys, in which he made the bulk of his money, as it has done away with a lot of canny nooks of roadside inns which used to live and thrive on the stage-coach and road traffic.
