Meaning: I try not to borrow OED definitions too much, but sometimes they're too poetic to resist:
Usefulness: 2 ("Despite reaching nominal adulthood at 18 or 21, most of us require several years of bletting before we reach full maturity. In some cases, decades.")
Logofascination: 2 (I always wonder who was the first to try that over-ripe fruit. The definitions and etymologies suggest that the French blet / blette / blettir which John Lindley referred to meant sleepy, but from what I can see it actually means over-ripe, or perhaps, originally, bruised.)
To become ‘sleepy,’ as an over-ripe pear, a special form of decay to which fleshy fruits are subject.
Some fruit - medlars, for example - are inedible until this process has completed.
Usefulness: 2 ("Despite reaching nominal adulthood at 18 or 21, most of us require several years of bletting before we reach full maturity. In some cases, decades.")
Logofascination: 2 (I always wonder who was the first to try that over-ripe fruit. The definitions and etymologies suggest that the French blet / blette / blettir which John Lindley referred to meant sleepy, but from what I can see it actually means over-ripe, or perhaps, originally, bruised.)