To get paid, to spend one's pay recklessly, and get tattooed. Paid, clipped and tattooed. Sailors.
The Slang
Dictionary - John Hotten - 1913
-Screw: salary, or wages.
-Blue, or BLEW: to pawn or pledge. Actually to get rid of.
-Blew, or BLOW: to lose or spend money.
-Blewed, a man who has lost or spent all his money is said to have BLEWED it.
-Blewed, got rid of, disposed of, spent.
A
Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant - Albert Barrère 1889
- Screw: salary, wages. Implies... effort by employer to diminish the rate, or employee to enforce payment of, the salary, which has to be screwed out.
-Blew, or blue: to waste to spend, to dissipate. "I blew a bob (I wasted a shilling)," To spend or lose one's money in gambling or betting.
-Blewed: spent, disposed of. Lost or been robbed of. Primarily, to put, to spend. German blauen, which suggests blue, and not to blow, as original. Ins blaue hinein (away into the blue), vanished, gone; the French passe au bleu has the same signification. Faire passer au bleu, to suppress, dissipate, spend, squander,
appropriate. An allusion to a distant,
undefined place
in the blue above.
-Blue, blew:To spend or lose one’s money at gambling. To waste money
generally. Varied to blew, from the phrase "blown in," which refers to money that has been spent, as in the phrase, "I’blewed’ all my tin." For a another variation see BLEWED.
-Blue the screw, (popular), to spend one’s salary
To blew one's pay means to ruin it or wreck it.
