blob n : an indistinct shapeless form v : make a spot or mark onto; "The wine spotted the tablecloth" [syn: spot, fleck, blot] [also: blobbing, blobbed]

see BLOB

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɒb

Etymology

Noun

1. A shapeless or amorphous mass; a vague shape or amount, especially of a liquid or semisolid substance; a clump, group, collection, or cluster that lacks definite shape.
   • 1869: Norman Lockyer et al, Nature

     Only the outermost blob on either side in map 2 displays misalignment.

   • 1895: The Annual of the British School at Athens

     It was a colourful vase with red and white hoops on the lid, and red bands above and below the main frieze. These bands also carry a metope pattern in white of triple lines and blobs, which can just be distinguished on the photographs.

Translations

• Finnish: möykky, kimpale
• Japanese: burobbu (ブロッブ)
• Russian: ком

Blob usually means a soft amorphous mass, and may refer to:

• Binary large object (BLOB), in computer database systems

• Metaballs, in computer graphics terms, are organic-looking n-dimensional objects
• Blob (comics), a Marvel Comics supervillain, adversary of the X-Men
• The Blob, 1958 American science-fiction film depicting a giant amoeba-like alien
  • The Blob (1988 film), the remake
• Blobitecture, in which buildings have an organic, amoeba-shaped, bulging form
• Binary blob, in open source computing, a non-free object file loaded into the kernel
• Blob detection, in computer vision, visual modules that detect regions in the image
• God object, or "The Blob", anti-pattern in object-oriented programming
• Blob (visual system), sections of the visual cortex where groups of neurons which are sensitive to color assemble in cylindrical shapes
• Lyman-alpha blob, a huge concentration of a gas emitting the Lyman-alpha emission line
• Globster, an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water
  • Chilean Blob, a 13-tonne mass of tissue discovered in 2003 on a beach in Chile, the partial remains of a dead sperm whale
  • A mass of sea squirts, found invading many coastal waters around the world
• The Blob (Clayfighter), playable character in the Clayfighter video games
• The terms "blob" and "the blob" are also offensive British slang for a menstruating woman's period.
• Blob is an English mass unit. It is the inch equivalent of the slug unit of mass.

See also

• Blobject, a colorful, mass-produced, plastic-based, emotionally engaging consumer product
• The Mississauga Blob, a flaming object—later that fell on a back-yard picnic table in Mississauga, Ontario in, 1979 identified as a frisbee
• May blobs, Caltha palustris flowers
• A Boy and His Blob, a video game developed in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System
• Mr. Blobby, Noel Edmonds novelty suit character

ball, balloon, bilge, bit, bladder, blain, bleb, blister, boll, bolus, boss, bow, bubble, bulb, bulbil, bulblet, bulge, bulla, bump, bunch, burl, button, cahot, chine, clump, condyle, convex, dab, dowel, drop, droplet, ear, ellipsoid, flange, flap, gall, geoid, globe, globelet, globoid, globule, glomerulus, gnarl, gob, gobbet, gout, handle, hill, hump, hunch, jog, joggle, knob, knot, knur, knurl, lip, loop, lump, mole, mountain, nevus, nub, nubbin, nubble, oblate spheroid, orb, orbit, orblet, papilloma, peg, pellet, prolate spheroid, rib, ridge, ring, rondure, shoulder, smidgen, smidgin, sphere, spheroid, spherule, spine, stud, style, tab, tubercle, tubercule, verruca, vesicle, wale, wart, welt