"blow (one's own/someone else's) mind" (with implications for cognitive science)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 11:37:13AM -0800, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2004, at 9:29 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> >...I've wondered about that.  The first conjunct ("she blew my nose")
> >I've always assumed is an obvious reference to coke, but I was never
> >sure about the mind--could be taken either way, or as a simple
> >metaphor (she caused me to blow my mind, in an unspecified way)...
>
> haven't we discussed this before?  or maybe that was on OUTiL or
> soc.motss or something...
>
> in any case, my interpretation always was that this was a nose/penis
> figure, and that the mind-blowing was a simple metaphor.

And I seem to be the one person who's always taken this as
literal all the way--it never occurred to me that "blew my
nose" was either a cocaine or a fellatio reference; I thought
it meant just that--"she helped me blow my nose, because she
was motherly, or solicitous of me when I was sick". As for
"blew my mind", I also went for the simple metaphor--"she did
(unspecified) sexual things that were mind-blowing".

Jesse Sheidlower, Prude of ADS-L
OED