Bluestocking

Word of the Day for Sunday 22^nd December 2013

Bluestocking \BLOO-stok-ing\ , noun:  

 
1. a woman with considerable scholarly, literary, or intellectual ability or interest.
2. a member of a mid-18th-century London literary circle: Lady Montagu was a celebrated bluestocking.

...if you rolled the whole group into one girl, she would be what Norine said — a rich, assured, beautiful bluestocking.
-- Mary McCarthy, The Group, 1963

She reads such deep books—all about facts and figures: she'll be quite a blue-stocking by and by.
-- Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, 1864-1866

Bluestocking originally referred to cheap blue socks worn by men, in contrast to fine white silk stockings. In the mid-1700’s, these blue socks became associated with intellectuals who attended salons where female intellectuals were highly valued. Eventually bluestockings came to be a pejorative term for intellectual women, though it started out as a positive or neutral term.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com