The Collaborative International Dictionary
By-blow \By"-blow`\, n.
-
A side or incidental blow; an accidental blow.
With their by-blows they did split the very stones in pieces.
--Bunyan. -
An illegitimate child; a bastard.
The Aga speedily . . . brought her [his disgraced slave] to court, together with her pretty by-blow, the present Padre Ottomano.
--Evelyn.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A blow struck to the side or from the side, as in swordplay; a secondary or incidental strike of any sort. 2 An illegitimate child; a child of an unknown or unmarried father.
WordNet
n. the illegitimate offspring of unmarried parents [syn: bastard, love child, illegitimate child, illegitimate, whoreson]
Usage examples of "by-blow".
Nonetheless, it is nothing less than a threat, a firm promise that if I do the most honorable thing and attack this foxy, poxy Aonghus Mac Dhomhnuill, this aging by-blow outcome of the unnatural coupling of a tusked seal and a perverted, udderless cow, then I will certainly stand to be invaded by the combined forces of both Scotland and England-Wales.
I saw my mother in Corinth, bitter and senile, dying at the graves of Glaucus and Bellerus, cursing Poseidon for not taking better care of his by-blows and Bellerophon for not taking better care of her.
Throw me down a ladder at once, you sorry by-blow outcome of a diseased sow and a spavined camel's perversions, else I'll see you given that swivel gun and all within it as the hottest clyster that your foul fundament ever has known!
Timoteo had sired a daughter and two sons of his first wife and a daughter by his second, and at least a dozen by-blows were scattered in the wake of his campaignings, but none of his male offspring seemed to have inherited their father's own unique blend of talents and strengths and there would likely never be more, for he had not quickened any woman since that hellish day that the forsworn Sforzas and their torturers had kept him in torment before Roberto and the condotta had burst in and rescued him.
The Museum of the National Association of the Builders of the American Dream was the by-blow of a long forgotten public-relations campaign with an added dash of non-profit-foundation tax evasion.