blowth n [swEngl dial (OED2 1602→)] orig NEng; later sAppalachians ?obs
Flowering, quantity of flowers, esp in ref to fruit trees.
1810 (1886) Robbins Diary 1.437 CT, Afternoon rode with my uncle to Somers. . . Universally a very great blowth on the fruit-trees. 1846 Hartford Daily Courant (CT) 12 Oct [2]/5, A pear tree belonging to the Parson’s house in State Street, Springfield, Mass., has on it half grown pears, of the third “blowth” this season. 1860 Daily Free Press (Burlington VT) 19 May [2]/4, Here . . the grass has come forward considerably, and the blowth of the fruit trees is large and promising. 1867 Lowell Biglow xxviii MA, From this word blow is formed blowth, which I heard again this summer after a long interval. . . With us a single blossom is a blow, while blowth means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland and away from the railways, year by year. 1896 Hartford Courant (CT) 7 May 10/5, “The Courant’s” Rocky Hill correspondent writes: “The peach ‘blowth’ in this section is ‘nil’.” 1911 Sun (NY NY) 22 Jan sec 2 6/6 ME, NH, This word [=blowth] . . is very much alive in Rockingham county, New Hampshire, and York county, Maine. The orchardist hereabout speaks of a “full blowth” or “light blowth” on his trees in May and predicts a good or poor “set” of the fruit in consequence. 1924 Raine Land of Saddle-Bags 103 sAppalachians, Blowth is the mass of blossoms that blow. “There’s a good blowth on the fruit trees this year.”Ibid 198, Afore sun-up, I tell ye, that old plum tree were jest one solid blowth o’ blossoms. 1957 Combs Lang. S. Highlanders 12, Blowth—blossoms, flowers, etc. that blow.