blue light
blue light noun: a mixture of chemicals (including nitre, sulfur and antimony) used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for night-time signaling and general illumination.
Noun
blue light (countable and uncountable, plural blue lights)
- A mixture of chemicals (including nitre, sulfur and antimony) used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for night-time signaling and general illumination.
- Blue lights, or blue fire, is a preparation in which zinc and sulphur, or sulphur alone, are used. The particular colour is communicated by the zinc and sulphur.1828, Samuel Frederick Gray, The Operative Chemist, page 499
- The blue-light, which, at its first flashing over the ocean, had made the very stars pale their lustre, and lighted up with ghastly radiance the enormous vault of heaven, was now only a point […].1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 57
- Synonyms:
- Bengal fire, Bengal light
- A New England federalist, who opposed the Anglo-American War of 1812; (loosely), a federalist.
- The “Blue-Light Elder” knows ’em well; / Says he, “That’s Banks — he’s fond of shell; / Lord save his soul! We’ll give him” — well, / that’s “Stonewall Jackson’s Way.”1862, John Williamson Palmer, Stonewall Jackson's Way
- A flashing light, usually fitted to an emergency vehicle.
- Blue-light escorts were provided where possible to get engineers to the stranded GTR trains to reset the software.2019 October, Roger Ford, “Power failure highlights specification confusion”, in Modern Railways, page 26
- Synonyms:
- cherry light, lightbar
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blue, light.
Verb
blue light (third-person singular simple present blue lights, present participle blue lighting, simple past and past participle blue lighted or blue lit)
- To travel quickly in a police or ambulance vehicle with the lightbar (and possibly the siren) activated.
- When we weren't blue lighting, we had to obey the 30 mph limit, but out of town we had a training exemption from any speed regulations and were encouraged to push the car to its limits... and we did.2011, John Donoghue, Police, Crime & 999, Troubador Publishing, →ISBN
- They jumped into his cruiser and blue-lighted it to Boston Medical Center at eighty miles per hour.2012, Jon Mukand, The Man with the Bionic Brain, Chicago Review Press, →ISBN
blue light meaning in Arabic
blue light in Arabic
- flashing light on emergency vehicle
- ضَوْء أَزْرَق ḍawʔ ʔazraq
Synonyms of blue light
Forms of blue light
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | blue lights |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | blue lights |
| present participle | blue lighting |
| past participle | blue lighted |
| past | blue lighted |
| past participle | blue lit |
| past | blue lit |
Words formed from blue light
Questions about blue light
- What does blue light mean?
- Blue light means a mixture of chemicals (including nitre, sulfur and antimony) used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for night-time signaling and general illumination.
- What is blue light in Arabic?
- Blue light in Arabic is ضَوْء أَزْرَق (ḍawʔ ʔazraq). See Blue light meaning in Arabic.
- What part of speech is blue light?
- Blue light can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of blue light?
- The plural of blue light is blue lights.
Words near blue light in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blue light (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 light.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blue_light. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.