Blue-stocking

subs. phr. (old).—a literary lady: applied usually with the imputation of pedantry. The generally received explanation is that the term is derived from the name given to certain meetings held by ladies in the days of Dr. Johnson for conversation with distinguished literary men. One of the most eminent of these literati was a Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, who always wore blue stockings, and whose conversation at these meetings was so much prized, that his absence at any time was felt to be a great loss, so that the remark became common, ‘We can do nothing without the BLUE STOCKINGS’; hence these meetings were sportively called BLUE-STOCKING CLUBS, and the ladies who attended them BLUE-STOCKINGS. It is stated that the name specially arose in this way. A foreigner of rank refused to accompany a friend to one of these parties on the plea of being in his travelling costume, to which there was the reply, ‘Oh! we never mind dress on these occasions; you may come in bas bleus or BLUE STOCKINGS,’ with allusion to Stillingfleet’s stockings, when the foreigner, fancing that bas bleus were part of the necessary costume, called the meeting ever after the Bas-bleu Society. Also (modern) BLUE. Derivatives are BLUE-STOCKINGISM, BLUE-STOCKINGER, etc.

  1780.  BURNEY, Diary, i., 326. Who would not be a BLUE-STOCKINGER at this rate?

  1784.  WALPOLE, Letters, iv., 381. [Walpole, writing to Hannah More, playfully makes it a verb = to put on BLUE STOCKINGS.] When will you BLUE-STOCKING yourself, and come amongst us?

  b. 1738, d. 1819.  WOLCOT (‘Peter Pindar’), Benevolent Epistle, in Wks. (Dublin, 1795), II., 125.

  1824.  SCOTT, St. Ronan’s Well, ii., 245. That d—d, vindictive, BLUE STOCKING’D wild cat.

  1834.  SOUTHEY, The Doctor, xxxiv. Madame de Staël collected round her a circle of literati, the BLUE LEGS of Geneva.

  d. 1860.  DE QUINCEY, Autobiographic Sketches, i., 358. He refers it to an old Oxford Statute enjoining the wearing of BLUE STOCKINGS on the students.

  1877.  Macmillan’s Magazine, May, 50. On the airs and graces of the gushing BLUE STOCKINGS who were in vogue in that day … she had no mercy.

  1877.  MARTINEAU, Autobiography, I., 100. Young ladies (at least in provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the parlour to sew,—during which reading aloud was permitted—or to practise their music; but so as to be fit to receive callers, without any signs of BLUE-STOCKINGISM which could be reported abroad.