bluet

English

Etymology

From Middle English blawede, blewed, blewet, bloued, blowed, bloweth,[1][2] from Middle English blewe (“blue”).[1][3] Alternatively, perhaps from Old French bleuet (diminutive of bleu (“blue”)).[2] Compare modern French bleuet (“cornflower”). By surface analysis, blue +‎ -et.

Pronunciation

Noun

bluet (countable and uncountable, plural bluets)

  1. (countable) Any of several different plants, from several genera, having bluish flowers.
    • 1913, Robert Frost, 'The Vantage Point':
      My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze [...].
    • 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin, published 2011, page 232:
      They passed undulating fields of wheat speckled with the confetti of poppies and bluets.
    1. Centaurea, a plant genus in the family Asteraceae
    2. Several plant genera in the family Rubiaceae, notably Houstonia and Oldenlandiopsis.
  2. (countable) Any of several small damselfly species, including the genera Coenagrion and Enallagma.
  3. (usually uncountable, historical) A kind of blue woolen cloth.
    Alternative form: bluette
    • 1899, Walter Phelps Dodge, “[Piers] Gaveston’s Early Days with Edward of Carnarvon”, in Piers Gaveston: A Chapter of Early Constitutional History, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, →OCLC, page 28:
      For the Feast of the Assumption, cloth of bluet and of rayed (i.e., striped) scarlet was bought for the robes of the Prince [Edward] and Sir John de Bretagne.
    • 1999, C. M. Woolgar, “The Senses, Religion and Intellectual Life”, in The Great Household in Late Medieval England, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 173:
      Bogo de Clare’s esquires were bought three cloths of scarlet ray and three of yellow cloth, together with furs and hoods of budge (lambskin). Bogo himself had bluet (blue cloth) and perse (dark-blue cloth), […]
    • 2006, C. P. Biggam, “Political upheaval and a disturbance in the colour vocabulary of Early English”, in C. P. Biggam, C. J. Kay, editors, Progress in Colour Studies, volumes I (Language and Culture), Amsterdam; Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, section 3 (Historical approaches), page 172:
      The fact that both words [bleu and bluet] have a clear connection with the colour blue leads to the suggestion that bluets could be of any price, provenance, quality, size, or any other feature, but they all had colour in common. […] It is safe to assume that bluets were woad-dyed woollens and it should be understood that a single vat of woad dye could produce a huge range of blues.

Derived terms

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 “bleuet, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “bluet, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
  3. ^ “bluet, n.”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Further reading

Anagrams

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