bluestocking

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: blue=stock=ing

CIDE DICTIONARY

bluestocking, n. 

•  A literary lady; a female pedant.  [1913 Webster]

  " As explained in Boswell's “Life of Dr. Johnson”, this term is derived from the name given to certain meetings held by ladies, in Johnson's time, for conversation with distinguished literary men. An eminent attendant of these assemblies was a Mr. Stillingfleet, who always wore blue stockings. He was so much distinguished for his conversational powers that his absence at any time was felt to be a great loss, so that the remark became common, “We can do nothing without the blue stockings.” Hence these meetings were sportively called bluestocking clubs, and the ladies who attended them, bluestockings."  [1913 Webster]
•  The American avocet (Recurvirostra Americana).  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

bluestocking, n. usu. derog. an intellectual or literary woman.

Etymology

from the (less formal) blue stockings worn by one man at a literary society meeting c.1750

THESAURUS

bluestocking

bibliophagic, book-fed, book-learned, book-loving, book-minded, book-read, book-wise, bookish, booky, donnish, formalist, inkhorn, literary, pedant, pedantic, precieuse, precieux, precisian, precisionist, purist, scholastic

ROGET THESAURUS

bluestocking

Scholar

N scholar, connoisseur, savant, pundit, schoolman, professor, graduate, wrangler, academician, academist, master of arts, doctor, licentitate, gownsman, philosopher, master of math, scientist, clerk, sophist, sophister, linguist, glossolinguist, philologist, philologer, lexicographer, glossographer, grammarian, litterateur, literati, dilettanti, illuminati, cogniscenti, fellow, Hebraist, lexicologist, mullah, munshi, Sanskritish, sinologist, sinologue, Mezzofanti, admirable Crichton, Mecaenas, bookworm, helluo librorum, bibliophile, bibliomaniac, bluestocking, bas-bleu, bigwig, learned Theban, don, Artium Baccalaureus, Artium Magister, learned man, literary man, homo multarum literarum, man of learning, man of letters, man of education, man of genius, antiquarian, antiquary, archaeologist, sage, pedant, doctrinaire, pedagogue, Dr, Pangloss, pantologist, criminologist, schoolboy, learned, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, he was a scholar and a ripe and good one, the manifold linguist.