noun. A woman with strong scholarly or literary interests.

Wearing blue stockings; specifically, wearing blue or gray worsted stockings, as opposed to those of black silk worn in court or ceremonial dress; hence, not in full dress; in plain dress.

Applied to assemblies held in London about 1750 at the houses of Mrs. Montague and other ladies, in which literary conversation and other intellectual enjoyments were substituted for cards and gossip, and which were characterized by a studied plainness of dress on the part of some of the guests. Among these was Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, who always wore blue stockings, and in reference to whom, especially, the coterie was called in derision the “Blue-stocking Society” or the “Blue-stocking Club,” and the members, especially the ladies, “blue-stockingers,” “blue-stocking ladies,” and later simply “blue-stockings” or “blues.”

noun. A member of the “Blue-stocking Club,” especially a woman (see above); by extension, any woman with a taste for learning or literature; a literary woman: originally used in derision or contempt, and implying a neglect on the part of such women of their domestic duties or a departure from their “proper sphere”; now hardly used except historically or humorously.

noun. A name of the American avoset, Recurvirostra americana. See avoset.

noun. A literary lady; a female pedant.

noun. The American avocet (Recurvirostra Americana).

noun. A scholarly, literary, or cultured woman.

noun. a woman having literary or intellectual interests

"Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet was the origin of the term bluestocking!"

adult female  woman  

Lawrence  Orientalism  awayfrom  backchat  blunderer  

bibliophagic  book-fed  book-learned  book-loving  book-minded