What is "blow up"

"explode," 1590s, from blow (v.1) + up (adv.). As a noun, it is recorded from 1809 in the sense "outburst, quarrel." Meaning "enlargement from a photograph" is attested by 1945. Old English had an adjective upablawan "upblown," used of a volcano, etc.

vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To explode or be destroyed by explosion. 2 (context transitive English) To cause (something or someone) to explode, or to destroy (something) or maim or kill (someone) by means of an explosion. 3 (context transitive English) To inflate or fill with air. 4 (context transitive English) To enlarge or zoom in. 5 (context intransitive English) To fail disastrously. 6 (context slang intransitive English) To become popular very quickly. 7 (context slang English) To suddenly get very angry. 8 (context slang intransitive English) To relatively quickly become much more fat or rotund. 9 (context transitive dated English) To inflate, as with pride, self-conceit, etc.; to puff up. 10 (context transitive dated English) To excite. 11 (context transitive dated English) To scold violently. 12 whistle

1. v. cause to explode; "We exploded the nuclear bomb" [syn: explode, detonate, set off]

2. make large; "blow up an image" [syn: enlarge, magnify] [ant: reduce]

3. get very angry and fly into a rage; "The professor combusted when the student didn't know the answer to a very elementary question"; "Spam makes me go ballistic" [syn: flip one's lid, throw a fit, hit the roof, hit the ceiling, have kittens, have a fit, combust, blow one's stack, fly off the handle, flip one's wig, lose one's temper, blow a fuse, go ballistic]

4. add details to [syn: embroider, pad, lard, embellish, aggrandize, aggrandise, dramatize, dramatise]

5. exaggerate or make bigger; "The charges were inflated" [syn: inflate, expand, amplify]

6. fill with gas or air; "inflate a balloons" [syn: inflate] [ant: deflate]

7. to swell or cause to enlarge, "Her faced puffed up from the drugs" [syn: puff, puff up, puff out]

Blow up, Blow-up or Blowup may refer to:

• Explosion
• An inflatable
• Blowup, a 1966 film by Michelangelo Antonioni
• Blow-up and Other Stories, a short story collection by Julio Cortázar
• Blow Up (magazine), the Italy-based music magazine.

Blow Up is a live album by jazz vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, released on the Jazz Music Yesterday label.

Blow Up is an EP and the debut release by Australian electronic dance music duo The Presets, released in November 2003 by record label Modular.

Blow Up is a club night that was founded in the early 1990s by promoter and DJ Paul Tunkin at a North London pub called "The Laurel Tree". The night quickly became the centre of the emerging Britpop scene in Camden attracting long queues of people eager to gain entry to the tiny venue. Early regulars included members of Blur, Pulp, Elastica, Suede, The Buzzcocks, Huggy Bear and The Jesus and Mary Chain, leading to the club being referred to as the place where " Britpop was born".

The style of Blow Up and its audience has been noted as an early influence on, and instrumental in, the later mid-Nineties explosion of the Britpop scene in the UK and abroad:

Blow Up were a British indie pop/ indie rock band active between 1986 and 1991.

Blow Up is the title of the fourth full-length studio album by The Smithereens. The album charted at #120 in the U.S. in late 1991. The second single, "Too Much Passion", became the group's second top-40 single, peaking at #37. Top of the Pops was released as the first single of the album.

Blow Up’s cover design is by movie poster/title sequence artist Saul Bass (“Vertigo,” “West Side Story,” “North by Northwest,” “Psycho”).

Blow Up is an Italian monthly music magazine, focusing primarily on alternative and obscure music. It specializes in the coverage of house music, electronica, experimental music, industrial music, queercore, techno, and jazz improvisation. Besides articles related to music, the magaaine also contains sections devoted to literature and film analysis. The editor of the magazine is Stefano Isidoro Bianchi, who is also the founder. The section on literature is curated by Fabio Donalisio, and the film section by Roberto Curti.