bluestocking means A scholarly, literary, or cultured woman. It carries an Arena rating of 1579, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, bluestocking ranks #462 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #715 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #1,084 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words, #1,599 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound.
Why “bluestocking” is a great word
A scholarly or intellectual woman, originally a member of an 18th-century literary society, from the phrase 'blue stockings', referring to the informal blue worsted stockings worn by the botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet, who attended literary gatherings in the 1750s lacking the formal black silk ones, with the term later applied to the society and its learned female members. Unlike a pedant, with its tiresome air of ostentatious rule-mongering, or a savant, suggesting isolated, innate genius, the bluestocking was a creature of society—her cultivation was for conversation, her learning meant for the shared glow of the salon. She is the quiet rustle of a page turned in a drawing-room full of talk, the sharp intelligence behind a lifted cup of tea, the civilizing resistance to mere gossip—a reminder that the life of the mind, for women, was once a clandestine and social art, and that intelligence, once admitted, changes the air in a room forever.
Etymology
From the 17th century. Originally in reference to blue stockings worn by men as opposed to more expensive white stockings. First associated with the Barebones Parliament in the 17th century, then with a series of literary salons which admitted female intellectuals in the 18th century; in particular the 18th-century Blue Stockings Society led by Elizabeth Montagu on the Parisian model. The term was not originally derogatory. However, none of the ladies wore blue stockings. The first recorded use of the term is in reference to Benjamin Stillingfleet. He was not rich enough to have the proper formal dress, which included black silk stockings and so he attended in everyday blue worsted stockings.
noun
- A scholarly, literary, or cultured woman.e.g.“Many of her ladyship’s letters were the most whimsical rhodomontades that ever blue-stocking penned.” — 1844 August, Fitz-Boodle [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], “Barry Provides for His Family and Attains the Height of His Luck”, in “The Luck of Barry Lyndon; A Romance of the Last Century”, in
- A member of an 18th-century Blue Stockings Society.
- A member of the English parliament of 1653, more commonly called the Barebones Parliament.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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