COMMON If you blow the whistle on something dishonest or illegal, or on someone who is doing something dishonest or illegal, you tell the authorities about them because you feel strongly that what they are doing is wrong. Members of Queensland coastal communities are being asked to blow the whistle on activities that damage the marine environment. The week he died, the Foreign Minister was planning to blow the whistle on corrupt top-level officials. Note: You can refer to this activity as whistle-blowing or use whistle-blowing before nouns. It took internal whistle-blowing to uncover the corruption. As one whistle-blowing former drug salesperson said on the film: `I sometimes wondered if people were dying as a result of what I was doing.' Note: A whistle-blower is someone who does this. The department needs to protect whistle-blowers — the health professionals who care enough to want to make a change in the system. Note: In games such as football, the referee blows a whistle to stop play when a player has committed a foul.