Dictionary

bluet en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /bluːɪt/

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (countable) Any of several different plants, from several genera, having bluish flowers.
   • They passed undulating fields of wheat speckled with the confetti of poppies and bluets. 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin, published 2011, page 232:
   • My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze …. 1913, Robert Frost, 'The Vantage Point'
2. (countable, uncountable) Any of several different plants, from several genera, having bluish flowers. ▸ Centaurea, a plant genus in the family Asteraceae
3. (countable, uncountable) Any of several different plants, from several genera, having bluish flowers. ▸ Several plant genera in the family Rubiaceae, notably Houstonia and Oldenlandiopsis.
4. (countable) Any of several small damselfly species, including the genera Coenagrion and Enallagma.
5. (historical, uncountable, usually) A kind of blue woolen cloth.
   • 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. 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:
   • 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), […] 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:
   • 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. 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:

Forms

Deriveds

boreal bluet · attenuated bluet · creeping bluet

Relateds

bluette