Verb (familiar).—To cry; to weep—used contemptuously. Also shortened
into blub.
1400. Test. Love, II. (1560), 283, 1. Han women none other wrech
... but blober and wepe till hem list stint. [M.]
1748. Smollett, Roderick Random, xliv. (1804), 202. He blubbered
like a great school-boy who had been whipped.
1826. Scott, Woodstock, IV. Phœbe Mayflower blubbered heartily for
company. [M.]
To sport blubber, phr. (common).—To show one’s breasts, said of women,
especially those with large and prominent bosoms.
Blubber and Guts, subs. (common).—Obesity; a low term.
Blubber-Belly, subs. (common).—A fat person.
Blubber Head, subs. (common).—A foolish, empty-headed individual.—See
Apartments to let.
Blucher (ch. hard), subs. (Winchester College).—1. A College præfect in
half power. Their jurisdiction does not extend beyond ‘Seventh Chamber
passage,’ though their privileges are the same as those of other
præfects. They are eight in number.
1864. Blackwood, p. 86. The remaining eight college præfects
(called in Winchester tongue, bluchers) have a more limited
authority, confined to Chambers and the Quadrangle.
1870. Mansfield, School-Life at Winchester College, p. 30. The
eight senior præfects were said to have ‘full power,’ and had some
slight privileges not enjoyed by the remaining ten, who were
generally called bluchers.
2. A non-privileged cab plying at railway stations. The origin of the
name and its application, as far as known, is given in the two
following quotations.
1864. Soc. Sc. Review, I., p. 406. The railway companies recognise
two other classes of cabs, called the ‘privileged’ ... and the
‘Bluchers,’ named after the Prussian Field-Marshal who arrived on
the field of Waterloo only to do the work that chanced to be
undone.
1870. Athenæum, 5 March, p. 328. Non-privileged cabs, which are
admitted to stations after all the privileged have been hired, are
known as Bluchers.
Bludgeoner, subs. (harlotry).—A bully; pimp; ponce; a man attached to a
house of ill-fame for the purpose of terrorising victims, and rendering
easier the task of plunder. [From bludgeon, a stout stick or club, + er
or eer; i.e., one armed with the weapon in question.]
1852. Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 224. Those brutal bludgeoneers ...
go out ... in gangs to poach. [M.]
1855. Trollope, Warden, xiv., p. 144. Old St. Dunstan with its
smiting bludgeoneer has been removed.
Bludger, subs. (thieves’).—A low thief, who does not hesitate to use
violence; literally one who will use a bludgeon. Cf., Bludget.
1856. H. Mayhew, Gt. World of London, p. 46. Those who plunder with
violence; as ... bludgers or ‘stick slingers,’ who rob in company
with low women.
Bludget, subs. (American).—This is given in the New York Slang
Dictionary [1881] as ‘a low female thief, who decoys her victims into
alley-ways, etc., to rob them.’ Cf., Bludger.
Blue.—Few words enter more largely into the composition of slang, and
colloquialisms bordering on slang, than does the word blue. Expressive
alike of the utmost contempt, as of all that men hold dearest and love
best, its manifold combinations, in ever varying shades of meaning,
greet the philologist at every turn. A very Proteus, it defies all
attempts to trace the why and wherefore of many of the turns of
expression of which it forms a part—why true blue should be synonymous
with faithful, staunch adherence to one’s faith and principles; or why,
on the other hand, to look blue should signify affected with fear,
dismayed, and low-spirited. Curiously enough, the historical method
helps but little to decide why in one case an exact reversal of meaning
should have taken place in the application of the word; for, as far as
the evidence is concerned, both the good and bad shades of meaning
appear to run contemporaneously. It is also noteworthy that the word
enters largely into the slang of nationalities other than our own;
indeed, one of the most curious, as well as one of the most interesting
facts connected with the comparative study of slang, is that which
reveals the oneness of the human race in its modes of thought and
speech, the Tower of Babel notwithstanding. This special feature of
slang will, to some extent, be found dealt with at the end of this
work; but the subject is too wide, and the field too vast, for one
student to have accomplished much single-handed. This, however, may be
said; that, comparing the slang of one nation with that of another, one
finds the same ideas cropping up, revealing, alas! the same follies and
foibles, but also showing, let it be said, in the few cases where slang
travels beyond the earthy and the sensual, the same aspirations, the
same endeavour, and the same hope.
Subs.—1. A policeman. [From the colour of the uniform.] This epithet
can be traced back to Elizabethan days [see Blue-bottle], and the
uniform seems to have been blue from time immemorial; indeed, this
colour appears from the earliest times to have been the badge of
servitude. Pliny tells us blue was the colour in which the Gauls
clothed their slaves; and, for many ages, blue coats were the liveries
of servants, apprentices, and those in humble stations of life—to wit,
the blue-clad beadles, the ‘varlets’ who wore the blue, the blue-coat
boys, and even harlots in a house of correction, who wore blue as a
dress of ignominy. The proverb quoted by Ray, ‘he’s in his better blue
clothes,’ i.e., ‘he thinks himself wondrous fine,’ has reference to the
livery of a servant. The police more recently have been known
collectively as blues, the men in blue, blue-boys, blue bottles,
blue-devils, royal regiment of foot-guards blue, all nicknames
referring to the colour of the uniform. For general synonyms, see Beak.
1877. Five Years’ Penal Servitude, ch. iv., p. 257. He would
chatter gaily and enter with great gusto into the details of some
cleverly executed ‘bit of business,’ or ‘bilking the
blues,’—evading the police.
18(?). Hood, Row at the ‘Oxford Arms.’
Well, that’s the row, and who can guess the upshot after all?
Whether Harmony will ever make the ‘Arms’ her house of call;
Or whether this here mobbing, as some longish heads fortell it,
Will grow to such a riot that the Oxford blues must quell it.
2. A blue is known to licensed victuallers and their customers in
certain districts of Wales as a compromise between the half-pint and
the pint pot. It is not recognised as a legal measure by the
authorities on weights and measures, but it is approaching to something
like a status, as it deserves to do in the interests of temperance.
Although there is no Board of Trade standard of the blue, and
inspectors have no power to stamp measures of this denomination for use
in trade, the Board of Trade has pointed out to the local authorities
that 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.