I heard in a movie description this line:
She spots the compass in the dirt, then picks it up and blows it off.
This line describes the protagonist picks up her compass off the ground and blows the dust off of it. I fount that expression odd, because to me "blow something off" would mean "to blow that thing off": for example, The wind blow off the papers. If you "blow the table off," does it mean you "blow to dust off the table"?
Or did I hear it wrong? Is the verb used here not blow? I am putting the audio clip here (uploaded to an audio sharing site Clyp) for reference.
Best Answer
In context it sounds like this means to blow dust or dirt off of it, but that is not how the phrase is usually used.
"Blow it off" is an informal idiom meaning to not do something you are supposed to do or are expected to do. Like, "I blew my homework off" means I didn't do my homework.
When used literally, "blow off" means to be carried away by the wind or gusts of air. Like, "the papers blew off the desk", or in an extreme case, "the hurricane was so strong that the roof blew off the house".
If you want to say that you blew the dust off something, you say "blew the dust off".