1. The common name for the Blue Corn-flower (Centaurea cyanus).
1551. Turner, Herbal, I. N iv. Blewbottel groweth in the corne.
1611. Florio, Battisegola, the weed blewbottle, Corneflower, or hurtsickle.
1672. T. Jordan, Lond. Tri., in Heath, Grocers’ Comp. (1869), 494. Grain … intermingled with yellow flowers, Blew-bottles and erratick Poppies.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xxvi. 402. Blue Bottle … whose beautiful blue colour would have attracted regard, had it been rare.
1863. Prior, Plant-n., 26.
b. Applied vaguely to other blue flowers.
1656. Ridgley, Pract. Physic, 118. Made of the flowers of Succory or Blew-bottles.
1884. W. Miller, Plant-n., 15. Blue Bottle, Scilla nutans, Centaurea cyanus, and various other blue flowers.
2. A nickname for a man in a dark blue uniform, as a beadle or policeman. Also attrib.
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., V. iv. 22. [Addressing a beadle] I will haue you as soundly swindg’d for this, you blue-bottle [1st Fol. blew Bottel’d] Rogue.
1607. Miseries Enforced Marr., in Hazl., Dodsley, IX. 471. How now, blue-bottle, are you of the house?
1864. Sala, in Daily Tel., 13 Sept., 2/1. Like a great blundering, bloodthirsty spider, he was caught in his own toils by the bluebottles of Scotland-yard.
3. Bluebottle fly: a fly (Musca vomitoria) with a large bluish body: the Meat-fly or Blow-fly.
c. 1720. Prior, Flies, Poems (1741), 158. A Fly upon the Chariot-Pole Cries out ‘What Blue-bottle alive Did ever with such fury drive?’
1817. Byron, Beppo, lxxiv. Humming like flies around the newest blaze, The bluest of bluebottles you e’er saw.
1822. W. Irving, Braceb. Hall, II. 199. The buzzing of a stout blue-bottle fly.
