Blister (pronounced blis-tah or blis-ter)
(1) A
thin vesicle on the skin, containing watery matter or serum and induced
typically by caused by friction, pressure, burning, freezing, chemical
irritation, disease or infection.
(2) In
botany, a swelling on a plant.
(3) A
swelling containing air or liquid, as on a painted surface.
(4) In medicine,
something applied to the skin to raise a blister; a vesicatory (blister agent) or
other applied medicine (mostly archaic).
(5) In
glass-blowing, a relatively large bubble occurring during the process.
(5) In roofing,
an enclosed pocket of air, which may be mixed with water or solvent vapor,
trapped between impermeable layers of felt or between the membrane and
substrate.
(7) In
military jargon, a transparent bulge or dome on the fuselage of an airplane,
usually for purposes of observation or mounting a gun but used sometimes as a
housing for rearward air extraction.
(8) In
photography, a bubble of air formed where the emulsion has separated from the
base of a film, usually as a result of defective processing.
(9) In metallurgy,
a form of smelted copper with a blistered surface.
(10) A
dome or skylight on a building.
(11) The
moving bubble in a spirit level.
(12) The
small blister-like covering of plastic, usually affixed to a piece of cardboard
or other flat sheet, and containing a small item (pens, hardware items etc).
(13) As
“blister pack” or “blister card”, the packaging used for therapeutic or medicinal
tablets in which the pills sit under small blister-like coverings, often
labeled sequentially (1,2,3 or Mon, Tue, Wed etc) to aid patients.
(14) As
“blister packaging” a type of pre-formed packaging made from plastic that
contains cavities; a variant of bubble-wrap.
(15) In
slang, an annoying person; an irritant.
(16) The
rhyming slang for “sister”, thus the derived forms “little blister”, “big blister”,
“evil blister” etc).
(17) In
slang, a “B-lister” (ie a celebrity used for some purpose or invited to an
event when it’s not possible to secure the services of an “A-Lister”. In industry slang, the less successful celebrity
managers are “blister agencies”.
(18) To
raise a blister; to form or rise as a blister or blisters; to become blistered.
(19) To
criticize or severely to rebuke (often as “blistering attack”).
(20) To
beat or thrash; severely to punish.
(21) In
cooking, to sear after blanching
1250–1300:
From the Middle English blister &
blester (thin vesicle on the skin
containing watery matter), possibly from the Old French blestre (blister, lump, bump), probably from the Middle Dutch blyster & bluyster (swelling; blister), from the Old Norse blǣstri (a
blowing), dative of blāstr (swelling). All the European forms are from the primitive
Indo-European bhlei- (to blow, swell),
an extension of the root bhel- (to
blow, swell). The verb emerged late in
the fifteenth century in the sense of “to become covered in blisters” and the
medical use (of vesicatories) meaning “to raise blisters on” is in the literature
from the 1540s. The noun & adjective
vesicatory dates from the early eighteenth century was from the Modern Latin vesicularis, from vesicula (little blister), diminutive of vesica (bladder). In
historic medicine, a vesicant (plural vesicants) or vesicatory (plural
vesicatories) is used as an agent which induces blistering. Typically a chemical compound, the primary
purpose was intentionally to create a blister to draw blood or other bodily
fluids to the surface, often in an attempt to relieve inflammation, improve
circulation in a specific area, or treat various conditions indirectly by this
counter-irritation technique. Historically,
vesicatories were commonly used with substances like cantharidin (from blister
beetles) being applied to the skin to achieve this effect but in modern medicine
the practice is (mostly) obsolete because more effective and less invasive
treatments now exist. Blister & blistering
are nouns, verbs & adjectives, blistered is a verb & adjective, and
blisterlike, blisterless & blistery are adjectives; the noun plural is
blisters.
1968 MGC Roadster with bulge, blister and the bulge's curious stainless steel trim.
The MGC (1967-1969) was created by replacing the MGB’s (1962-1980) 1.8 litre four cylinder engine with a 2.9 litre (178 cubic inch) straight-six, something which necessitated a number of changes, one of which was the bonnet (hood) which gained a bulge to accommodate the revised placement of the radiator and, on the left-hand side, a small blister because the forward of the two carburettors sat just a little too high to fit even with the bulge. Because to raise the whole bulge would have the bonnet look absurd, the decision was taken just to add a blister. A blister (in this context) is of course a type of bulge and where a blister ends a bulge begins is just a convention of use, blisters informally defined as being smaller and of a “blister-like shape”, something recalling one appearing on one’s foot after a day in tight, new shoes. A blister (which some seem to insist on calling a “teardrop” in they happen to assume that shape) also differs from a scoop in that it’s a enclosed structure whereas a scoop has an aperture to permit airflow. There are however some creations in the shape of a typical blister which are used for air-extraction (the aperture to the rear) but these tend to be called “air ducts” rather than blisters. MGC’s bulged and blistered bonnet has always been admired (especially by students of asymmetry) and both the originals (in aluminium which is an attraction in itself) and reproduction items are often used by MGB owners, either just for the visual appeal or to provide greater space for those who have installed a V8. The apparently superfluous stainless steel trim piece in the bulge (there's no seam to conceal) is believed to be a motif recalling the small grill which was in a similar place on BMC’s (British Motor Corporation) old Austin-Healey 3000 (1959-1967), the MGC created because the 3000 couldn’t easily be modified to comply with the increasingly onerous US regulations. Because there were doubts the cost of developing a replacement would ever be recovered, the decision was taken to build what was, in effect, a six-cylinder MGB. The considerable additional weight of the bigger engine spoiled the MGB’s almost perfect balance and although a genuine 120 mph (195 km/h) machine, the MGC was never a critical or commercial success with only 8,999 (4,542 roadsters & 4,457 coupés) produced during its brief, two season life.
Republic P-47C Thunderbolt with the original colonnaded canopy (top) and the later P-47D with blister canopy (bottom).
When the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt (1941-1945) entered service with the USAAF (United States Army Air Force) in 1942, it was the largest, heaviest, single seat, piston-engined fighter ever produced, a distinction it enjoys to this day. However, one thing it did share with some of its contemporaries was the replacement in later versions of the colonnaded canopy over the cockpit by an all-enveloping single panoramic structure which afforded the pilot unparalleled visibility, something made possible by advances in injection molding to fabricate shapes in Perspex, then still a quite novel material. These canopies were adopted also for later versions of the The Supermarine Spitfire (1938-1948) and the North American P-51 Mustang (1941-1946) but the historians of aviation seem never to have settled on a description, opinion divided between “bubble-top” and “blister top”.
In
military aviation, “blister” is more familiar as a use to describe the transparent
bulge (or dome) on the fuselage of an airplane, usually for purposes of
observation or mounting a gun but used sometimes to house a rearward air
extraction device. However, because of
other linguistic traditions in military design, the “blisters” used as gun
mounting position were also described with other words, the use sometimes a
little “loose”. One term was barbette (plural
barbettes), a borrowing from the French and used historically to mean (1) a
mound of earth or a platform in a fortification, on which guns are mounted to
fire over the parapet and (2) (in naval use), the inside fixed trunk of a
warship's gun-mounting, on which the turret revolves and used to contain the
hoists for shells and cordite from the shell-room and magazine.
Also
used was turret, from the Middle English touret,
from the Old French torete (which
endures in Modern French as tourette),
a diminutive of tour (tower), from the Latin turris. In architecture (and
later adoptions like electronic circuitry and railcar design), turrets tended
to be variations of or analogous with “towers” but in military use there was a
specific evolution. The early military
turrets were “siege towers”, effectively a “proto-tank” or APC (armoured personnel
carrier) in the form of what was essentially a “building on wheels”, used to
carry ladders, casting bridges, weapons and soldiers equipped with the tools
and devices need to storm so fortified structure such as a fort or castle. From this evolved the still current idea notion
of an armoured, rotating gun installation on a fort or warship and as powered
land vehicles and later flying machines (aircraft) were developed, the term was
adopted for their various forms of specialized gun mountings. In aircraft, the term blister came later, and
allusion to the blister-like shape increasingly used to optimize aerodynamic
efficiency, something of little concern to admiralties.
Mar-a-Lago, Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida.
Another military blister was the cupola (plural cupolas or cupolae), from the Italian cupola, from the Late Latin cūpula (a small cask; a little tub), from the Classical Latin cuppella, from cuppa & cūpa (tub), from the Ancient Greek κύπελλον (kúpellon) (small cup), the construct being cūp(a) + -ula, from the primitive Indo-European -dlom (the instrumental suffix) and used as a noun suffix denoting an instrument. The origin in Latin was based on the resemblance to an upturned cup, hence the use to describe the rounded top of just about any structure where no specific descriptor existed. In military use, a cupola is basically a helmet fixed in place and that may be on a building, a ship or an armored vehicle, the function being to protect the head while offering a field of view. Sometimes, especially in tanks or armored cars, guns or flame-throwers were integrated into cupolas and in naval gunnery, there was the special use to describe the dome-like structures protecting a (usually single) gun mounting, something which distinguished them from the larger, flatter constructions which fulfilled the same purpose for multi-gun batteries. Turrets and cupolas are among the architectural features of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) winter palace on Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida.
Northrop P-61 Black Widow: A prototype with the troublesome dorsal blister turret (left), the early production P-61A with the blister removed (upper right) and the later P-61B with the blister restored (lower right).
The attractive aerodynamic properties of the classic blister shape was an obvious choice for use in aircraft but even then, they weren’t a complete solution. The Northrop P-61 Black Widow was the first aircraft designed from a clean sheet of paper as a night-fighter, cognizant of the experience of the RAF (Royal Air Force) which during the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) Blitz of London (1940-1941) had pressed into service day-fighter interceptors. Designed to accommodate on-board radar, the Black Widow was heavily gunned and incorporated notable US innovations such as remote control firing mechanisms. Part of the original was a remotely-controlled blister turret on the dorsal section which proved the shape’s aerodynamic properties worked only when pointed in the appropriate direction; when pointed at right-angles to the aircraft’s centre-line, the tail section between the twin-booms suffered severe buffeting. Accordingly, the blister turret was deleted from the early production versions but the early experience of the military confirmed the need for additional firepower and after a re-design, it was restored to the slightly lengthened P-61B. The integration of so many novel aspects of design meant the P-61 didn’t enter service until 1944 and, as the first of its breed, it was never a wholly satisfactory night-fighter but it was robust, had good handling characteristics and offered the advantage of being able to carry a heavy payload which meant it could operate as a nocturnal intruder with a lethal disposable load. It was however in some ways a demanding airframe to operate, the manufacturer recommending that when fully-loaded in its heaviest configuration, a take-off run-up of 3 miles (4.8 km) was required. Although its service in World War II (1939-1945) was limited, remarkably, like the de Havilland Mosquito (DH.98), the Black Widow was also a Cold War fighter, both in service until 1951-1952 because of a technology deficit which meant it wasn’t until then jet-powered night-fighters came into service. The Black Widow was in 1949 (by then designated F-51), the first aircraft in service in the embryonic USADC (US Air Defense Command), formed to defend the country from any Soviet intrusion or attack.
Xanax (Alprazolam), a fast-acting benzodiazepine. It is marketed as anti-anxiety medication and supplied in blister packs.
Xanax by Lindsay Lohan
Xanax lyrics Universal © Music Publishing Group
