Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Full-blown \Full"-blown`\, a.
Fully expanded, as a blossom; completely developed; as, a full-blown rose.
--Denham.Fully distended with wind, as a sail.
--Dryden.Hence: Of full intensity; as, the recession developed into full-blown depression; a full-blown international crisis.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
of flower blossoms, "fully open," 1640s, from full (adj.) + blown "that has blossomed," from Old English geblowenne, past participle of blow (v.2) "to bloom." Figuratively "complete, fully developed" from 1650s. Full-blown also was used 17c.-18c. in reference to cheeks, sails, bladders, "fully distended" (by or as if by wind), in this case from blow (v.1), and the figurative sense might also be from or influenced by these.
Wiktionary
a. 1 completely developed or formed. 2 At the peak of blossom; ripe. 3 Filled with wind; puffed up.
WordNet
adj. fully ripe; at the height of bloom; "a full-blown rose" [syn: matured]
having or displaying all the characteristics necessary for completeness; "a full-blown financial crisis"
Usage examples of "full-blown".
American cryptanalytic agencies had not sprung full-blown into being like Athena from the brow of Zeus.
Thus, the psychic is, and can be, the home of anything from initital meditation experiences to paranormal phenomena, from out-of-the-body experiences to kundalini awakenings, from a simple state of equanimity to full-blown cosmic consciousness: they are all the subtle realm breaking into the gross realm at the common border: the psychic.
With AIDS, you get HIV-Human Immunodeficiency Virus-and then maybe a few years later, it blossoms into full-blown Advanced Immune Deficiency Syndrome, putting the sufferer at risk for contracting fatal cancers or flus.
Canadian neurophysiologist Wilder Penfield that electrical stimulation of certain regions of the brain elicits full-blown hallucinations.
And the full-blown rectors and vicars, with full-blown tithes--with tithes when too full-blown for strict utilitarian principles--will necessarily follow.
She sat in her day-dream long after Bathsheba had left her, her eyes fixed, not on the faded portrait of her beatified ancestress, but on that other canvas where the dead Beauty seemed to live in all the splendors of her full-blown womanhood.
Hourly the immortal prevailing more: Till one hot noon saw Meliboeus peep From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame, In circle by the lusty friskers gripped, Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were stripped.
For a maiden in bloom, or a full-blown dame, Are the daintiest prey, and the windingest game, When Kaisers go a-hunting, Tra-ra!
Indeed, it appears that Saddam calculated that a full-blown Arab-Israeli war would be a tremendous opportunity for him because it probably would split the United States and the moderate Arab states, compel the GCC countries to evict the U.
Nevertheless, there is no reason that Iraq must adopt a full-blown Western system of democracy, rather than creating a new Arab-style pluralist state.
Aaron assures himself that his newfound deceitfulness is a necessary short-term skill to be abandoned once full-blown devotee-dom has been achieved.
He delighted in the knowledge that he had turned his love of biogenetics into a full-blown business venture that added to what his father had given his life to build.
He had never heard of a man with full-blown breasts, except for the chosen castrates who claimed to have converted to women.
And then she did something that Quinn had seen no one do for twenty-five years, and then it had been his mentor, Gerard Ryder, who most people agreed had been eccentric to the point of being full-blown bat shit.
Cernay had Pelouse, the admirable, placid Pelouse, smilingly critical of youth, who, when a full-blown commercial traveller, suddenly threw down his samples, bought a colour-box, and became the master whom we have all admired.