Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having blossomed or opened completely.
  • adjective Fully developed or matured.
  • adjective Having or displaying all the characteristics necessary for completeness.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Fully expanded, as a blossom.
  • Figuratively, perfected; developed; matured; finished: as, a full-blown beauty; a full-blown doctor.
  • Fully distended with wind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Fully expanded, as a blossom; completely developed.
  • adjective Fully distended with wind, as a sail.
  • adjective Of full intensity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Completely developed or formed.
  • adjective At the peak of blossom; ripe.
  • adjective Filled with wind; puffed up.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having or displaying all the characteristics necessary for completeness
  • adjective fully ripe; at the height of bloom

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • A battle we did win was establishing a definition of full-blown AIDS that included symptoms common to women and that let them get treatment and financial entitlements, such as disability, available to men.

    OUR BODIES, OURSELVES The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective 2005

  • If the economy's true trend growth rate is even modestly below the 2.25% to 2.5% economists figure, the bank could be forced into raising rates well before what most observers would call a full-blown recovery.

    The Bank of England's Growing Pains Alen Mattich 2011

  • I think all these enabled him, before most Democrats, to understand the doubts that Americans were feeling about Washington and government toward the end of the Great Society—doubts that would erupt into full-blown hostility toward government in the Reagan era.

    The Good Fight Walter F. Mondale 2010

  • I think all these enabled him, before most Democrats, to understand the doubts that Americans were feeling about Washington and government toward the end of the Great Society—doubts that would erupt into full-blown hostility toward government in the Reagan era.

    The Good Fight Walter F. Mondale 2010

  • I think all these enabled him, before most Democrats, to understand the doubts that Americans were feeling about Washington and government toward the end of the Great Society—doubts that would erupt into full-blown hostility toward government in the Reagan era.

    The Good Fight Walter F. Mondale 2010

  • Lehman's collapse triggered a full-blown crisis in no small part because investors had little clarity about who was solvent and who wasn't, and who would be saved and who would be left to fail.

    None Dare Call It Default 2011

  • And then when those risks finally show up: blammo, you get a full-blown banking crisis.

    Matthew Yglesias » The Bitter Fruits of a Finance-Oriented Economy 2010

  • Which augurs ill for the present time, inasmuch as no one can believe that the socio-economic problems that underlay the riots in 1965 and 1992 in Los Angeles alone were anything but minor in comparison to the dislocations that full-blown hyperinflation or depression – or even the run-ups to those conditions – will bring about in contemporary society throughout America.

    Matthew Yglesias » Endgame 2010

  • Still, Chico must surely count the new polls as a good sign, if not a full-blown surge.

    Chico Passes Braun For Second Place In Newest Polls Will Guzzardi 2011

  • Still, Chico must surely count the new polls as a good sign, if not a full-blown surge.

    Chico Passes Braun For Second Place In Newest Polls Will Guzzardi 2011

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