[Named after the Prussian commander Field-Marshal von Blücher.]
1. A strong leather half-boot or high shoe, the actual pattern varying with the fashion.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., I. iii. (1838), 25. Ink-bottles alternated with … tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blücher Boots.
1854. Thackeray, Newcomes, I. 130. My own bootmaker wouldn’t have allowed poor F. B. to appear in Bluchers.
1859. Sat. Rev., 19 Feb., 220. If they [ladies] will trample on us with a hobnailed blucher.
2. (See quots.)
1864. Soc. Sc. Rev., I. 406. The railway companies recognize 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, 328. Non-privileged cabs, which are admitted to stations after all the privileged have been hired, are known as Bluchers.
