Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

Hello:

What does
"ripe-blown"
suggest to you here?

"Blown by the wind, as the flowers were ripe?"

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The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very
bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single
window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation
white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white
caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across
the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals,
ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little
cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink
and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic
with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale
with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, p. 40
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It seems to be something created ad-hoc by Huxley.

Thanks.
Marius Hancu