Word.ws English Dictionary

blue-stocking

blue-stocking is the alternative spelling of bluestocking.

Meaning of bluestocking

Noun

bluestocking (plural bluestockings)

  1. (derogatory, usually) A scholarly, literary, or cultured woman.
    • Many of her ladyship’s letters were the most whimsical rhodomontades that ever blue-stocking penned.1844 August, Fitz-Boodle [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], “Barry Provides for His Family and Attains the Height of His Luck”, in “The Luck of Barry Lyndon; A Romance of the Last Century”, in...
    Synonyms:
    basbleu
  2. (historical) A member of an 18th-century Blue Stockings Society.
  3. (historical) A member of the English parliament of 1653, more commonly called the Barebones Parliament.

Forms of blue-stocking

pluralblue-stockings

Questions about blue-stocking

What is blue-stocking the alternative spelling of?
Blue-stocking is the alternative spelling of bluestocking.

Words near blue-stocking in the dictionary

  1. blue-sky law
  2. blue-sky laws
  3. blue-sky thinking
  4. blue-skying
  5. blue-spotted
  6. blue-stocking
  7. blue-stockings
  8. blue-throated goldentail
  9. blue-throated goldentails
  10. blue-throated sapphire
  11. blue-throated sapphires

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue-stocking (page history and authors); bluestocking (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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Cite this entry: “blue-stocking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blue-stocking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.