Forms: 5 blunesse, 5–7 blewnes, 6–7 blewnesse, 8– blueness. [f. BLUE a. + -NESS.]
1. The state or quality of being blue, blue color.
1600. Fairfax, Tasso, VI. xc. His azure robe the orient blewnesse lost.
1742. Richardson, Pamela, IV. 35. The … fine thin Blueness given to the first Milk.
1882. Howells, in Longm. Mag., I. 51. A … sky … of more than Italian blueness.
2. The quality or state of being livid, as a bruise; the mark of a bruise.
1491[?]. Caxton, 15 Oes, in Blades, Caxton, 353. The blewnes of thy woundes.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 47. And with the blewnesse of his stripes are we healed.
1678. Otway, Friendship in Fash., 14. Ay, and then that blewness under the eyes.
3. fig. The quality of a blue-stocking; feminine learning or pedantry.
1881. Mary A. Lewis, Two Pretty Girls, III. 37. They might go in for some other line—fastness, or blueness, or music, or authorship, and get up a clique of their own.
4. Indelicacy, indecency. (Cf. BLUE a. 9.)
1840. Carlyle, Diderot, Ess., 240 (L.). The occasional blueness of both [writings] shall not altogether affright us.
