Blimp

Blimp was the name given to the barrage balloons of WWI. Thereafter, Colonel Blimp was a character invented by the cartoonist David Low (1891-1963) in 1934. Colonel Blimp was pictured as a pompous, opinionated person voicing outrageous, reactionary opinions, hence descriptive of people of this type. Blimp is currently British slang for a fat person and dates from the 1980s with the obvious allusion to the barrage balloon.