Word.ws English Dictionary

blue-plate special

blue-plate special noun: a popular meal offered at a reduced price, usually in inexpensive eateries and often on a plate divided into compartments for different food items.

blue-plate special: a popular meal offered at a reduced price, usually in inexpensive eateries and often on a plate...
Image: w:Kaszeta, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

blue-plate special (plural blue-plate specials)

  1. (US, dated) A popular meal offered at a reduced price, usually in inexpensive eateries and often on a plate divided into compartments for different food items.
    • [H]is big blue plate special, with meat course and three vegetables, is purchasable for a quarter, just as it has been for the last ten years.1928 December 2, Bertram Reinitz, “Where New York Dines on a Dime […]”, in The New York Times (Special Features section), New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the...
    • Most had stayed at the convention hotel, but at dinner time many went across the street for the fifty-cent blue plate special.1968, Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States: The Golden Web: 1933 to 1953, Oxford, →ISBN, page 36

Forms of blue-plate special

pluralblue-plate specials
alternative formblue plate special

Questions about blue-plate special

What does blue-plate special mean?
Blue-plate special means a popular meal offered at a reduced price, usually in inexpensive eateries and often on a plate divided into compartments for different food items.
What part of speech is blue-plate special?
Blue-plate special is a noun.
What is the plural of blue-plate special?
The plural of blue-plate special is blue-plate specials.

Words near blue-plate special in the dictionary

  1. blue-pill
  2. blue-pilled
  3. blue-pilling
  4. blue-pills
  5. blue-plate
  6. blue-plate special
  7. blue-plate specials
  8. blue-print
  9. blue-prints
  10. blue-red
  11. blue-ribbon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue-plate special (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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