BELLOWS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does bellows mean? 

• BELLOWS (noun)
  The noun BELLOWS has 1 sense:

1. (used in the plural) a mechanical device that blows a strong current of air; used to make a fire burn more fiercely or to sound a musical instrument

  Familiarity information: BELLOWS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BELLOWS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(used in the plural) a mechanical device that blows a strong current of air; used to make a fire burn more fiercely or to sound a musical instrument

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("bellows" is a kind of...):

blower (a device that produces a current of air)

Domain usage:

plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)

 Context examples 

He gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I can’t hardly believe that it was really you that used to come down to blow the bellows when Boy Jim and I were at the anvil.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

On seeing the master enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said something that I thought sounded like My Charley! but on seeing me come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of half curtsey.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Then I do it again and again, and blow up the bellows and feed the forge, and rasp a hoof or two, and there is a day’s work done, and every day the same as the other.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I say it ain't likely, in a man who knows his wind will go, when it DOES go, as if a pair of bellows was cut open; and that man a grandfather, said Mr. Omer.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He would strike once with his thirty-pound swing sledge, and Jim twice with his hand hammer; and the Clunk—clink, clink! clunk—clink, clink! would bring me flying down the village street, on the chance that, since they were both at the anvil, there might be a place for me at the bellows.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)