Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/270

 there is nothing in the Weights and Measures Act to prevent the use of the blue or to make its possessor liable to penalties, always provided of course that the vessel is not used as a measure.

3. A scholar of Christ's Hospital; a blue-coat boy. [This nickname is also derived from the colour of the clothes—blue drugget gown or body with ample skirts to it, a yellow vest underneath in winter time, small clothes of Russia duck, worsted yellow stockings, a leathern girdle, and a little black worsted cap, usually carried in the hand, being the complete costume. This was the ordinary dress of children in humble life during the reigns of the Tudors.]

1834. W. Trollope (Title), Christ's Hospital with memoirs of Eminent Blues.

1877. W. H. Blanch, Blue-Coat Boys, p. 33. To some extent it holds also with regard to Civil Engineers, amongst whom, however, one well-known name is that of a blue.

4. Short for blue-stocking (q v.); formerly a contemptuous term for a woman having or affecting literary tastes.

1788. Madame D'Arblay, Diary (1876), iv., 219. He was a little the more anxious not to be surprised to-night, but his being too tired for walking should be imputed to his literary preference of reading to a blue. At tea Miss Planta again joined us, and instantly behind him went the book; he was very right, for nobody would have thought it more odd or more blue.

1823. Byron, Don Juan, ch. xi., st. 50. The Blues, that tender tribe, who sigh o'er sonnets.

1845. Disraeli, Sybil, p. 76. 'But she was very clever ' 'Accomplished?' 'Oh, far beyond that ' 'A regular blue.'

1853. Rev. E. Bradley ('Cuthbert Bede'), Adventures of Verdant Green, I., p. 7. His Aunt Virginia was as learned a blue as her esteemed ancestress in the court of Elizabeth, the very Virgin Queen of Blues.

5. Female learning or pedantry.

1824. Byron, Don Juan, xvi., 47. She also had a twilight tinge of blue. [m.]

6. (University.)—At Oxford and Cambridge a man is said to get his blue when selected as a competitor in inter-university sports. The University colours are, for Oxford, dark blue; and for Cambridge, light blue. Cf., To get one's silk, said of a barrister when made Queen's Counsel.

Adj.—1. A contemptuous epithet applied usually to women of literary tastes.—See Blue-stocking. The French have elle est bleue celle-là; en voilà une de bleue; je la trouve bleue.

1788. Mad. D'Arblay, Diary (1842), iv., p. 219. Nobody would have thought it more odd or more blue.

1834. Southey, The Doctor, ch. lxxxix. Les Dames des Roches, both mother and daughter were remarkable and exemplary women; and there was a time when Poictiers derived as much glory from those blue ladies as from the Black Prince.

1839. Lever, Harry Lorrequer, ch. xi. She was a little, a very little blue—rather a babbler in the 'ologies' than a real disciple.

1842. Dickens, American Notes, ch. iii., p. 33. Blue ladies there are, in Boston; but like philosophers of that colour and sex in most other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior than to be so.

1852. F. E. Smedley, Lewis Arundel, ch. xxxiii. She had been growing decidedly blue. Not only had she, under Bray's auspices, published a series of papers in Blunt's Magazine, but she had positively written a child's book.

1864. Spectator, No. 1875, p. 660. A clever, sensible woman, rather blue.

2. Indecent; 'smutty'; obscene. This may be derived from the blue dress of harlots—see preceding, subs., 1—although Hotten suggests it as coming