blue law
blue law noun: a restrictive religious-based law in colonial New England, especially preventing leisure activities on a Sunday.
Noun
blue law (plural blue laws)
- A restrictive religious-based law in colonial New England, especially preventing leisure activities on a Sunday.
- Years ago, because of the Blue Laws, we couldn't serve drinks on Sunday over the bar, so we set up tables in the aisles. And we'd have different acts on a stage up front.1976 February 7, Rose Flower, quoting Jimmy McGrath, “Playland: The Friendliest Place In Town”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 32, page 13
- Any puritanical or restrictive law, especially one that prohibits or restricts commercial activity on a Sunday.
- [I]t's actually a way around the Swiss blue laws demanding that shops close from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. The laws apply everywhere but the airport, so they built a massive supermarket in the Swiss Air terminal.2001, David Sedaris, diary entry January 22, in Theft by Finding, Back Bay Books 2017, p. 441
Forms of blue law
| plural | blue laws |
|---|
Origin of blue law
Unknown.
Questions about blue law
- What does blue law mean?
- Blue law means a restrictive religious-based law in colonial New England, especially preventing leisure activities on a Sunday.
- What part of speech is blue law?
- Blue law is a noun.
- What is the plural of blue law?
- The plural of blue law is blue laws.
Words near blue law in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blue law (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “blue law.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blue_law. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.