Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several flies of the genus Calliphora that have a bright metallic-blue body and breed in decaying organic matter.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In bot., Centaurea Cyanus, a composite plant, a weed in Europe, cultivated for ornament in America. Also called bluebonnet and bluecap.
- n. In zoology, a dipterous insect with a blue abdomen, of the family Muscidæ and genus Musca, or Calliphora. Also popularly called beef-eater and blue flesh-fly.
- n. A policeman, a beadle, or other officer wearing a blue dress.
- n. plural The grape-hyacinth, Muscari botryoides and M. racemosum. See Muscari.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of various blowflies of the genus Calliphora that have an iridescent metallic-blue body and make a loud buzzing noise whilst flying.
- n. Any of various marine creatures of the order Physalia, such as Physalia physalis, the Portuguese man-of-war.
- n. Centaurea cyanus, a plant that grows in grain fields, with blue flowers resembling bottles.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) an annual Eurasian plant (Centaurea cyanus) which grows in grain fields; -- called also
bachelor's button . It receives its name from its blue bottle-shaped flowers. Varieties cultivated in North America have showy heads of blue or purple or pink or white flowers. - n. (Zoöl.) A large and troublesome species of blowfly (Musca vomitoria). Its body is steel blue.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an annual Eurasian plant cultivated in North America having showy heads of blue or purple or pink or white flowers
- n. blowfly with iridescent blue body; makes a loud buzzing noise in flight
Etymologies
- blue + bottle (Wiktionary)
Examples
“And once Fenn had put in one song it was inevitable that he would put in another, for which the bluebottle was the "singer".”
“At times Sam Brown's production makes Gill's subtext overly apparent: the cast are onstage throughout so that, when Dennis goes to kill a bluebottle, he attacks his father seen praying behind Annemarie Woods's set.”
“The book is full of scientific observations of creatures such as the sea speckle, the red poison needle, the oleander, the bluebottle or coral.”
“He said he had always thought "that the taste of mole was the most repulsive" he knew, until he ate a bluebottle fly.”
The Wall Street Journal: Welcome to the Museum Of Weird and Wonderful
“But crucially, the case against the doctor was also much aided by a certain Dr AG Mearns, an expert on insects, who established the date on which the body parts had been deposited in the ravine from the presence of a mass of bluebottle larvae, aged 12 to 14 days, crawling all over them.”
“In Britain, they include the common bluebottle and greenbottle, and they are the forensic entomologist's raw material.”
“And the camera pulled back to reveal the bluebottle was sitting on top of this brown mess.”
“I suddenly got a really bizarre image of the bluebottle fly version of “Two Girls, One Cup”.”
“I happened to spot the aquamarine from the abdomen of a bluebottle, brilliant in the sunlight but all trussed up on a deathbed of silk.”
“A stray bluebottle fly buzzed him, and absentmindedly the King transformed it into a small bluebottle tree growing from a crevice in the desk.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bluebottle’.
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blue phrases/words
how blue is used
blue and white, blue apron, blue-aproned, blue-arsed fly, blue asbestos, blue ash, blue-assed fly, blue baby, blue-backed, blue bag, blue balls, blue band and 370 more...
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LIT - Ulysses - key words and phrases
vanish, number one, archangel, commodious, dominie, rubble, glisten, morose, spindle, ventilation, Blessed, christian and 503 more...
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I Am A Starfish. I Speak With Paint.
List title totally stolen from she. Right, the stock entry for this list should be a two-word phrase where one of the words denotes a colour; even better if the expression has some metaphoric value...
black dog, tangerine dream, orange roughy, blue moon, blackguard, white house, purple rain, grey nurse, green thumb, yellow fever, sacre bleu, palo verde and 159 more...
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Flora
Flowers and plants have some of the most beautiful names.
These are often the common names, as opposed to the scientific or botanical names.daffodil, gardenia, tulip, snapdragon, violet, orchid, bleeding heart, daisy, lily, lilac, narcissus, rose and 278 more...
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blue
bluejeans, blue sky, blue angel, blue heaven, blue jay, blue cheese, blue ridge, blue ribbon, blue print, blue rinse, bluestocking, blue shift and 50 more...
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Bottles
wine bottle, beer bottle, ketchup bottle, bottleneck, bottlenose dolphin, 99 bottles of bee..., baby bottle, pop bottle, bottle of perfume, water bottle, shampoo bottle, medicine bottle and 6 more...
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harry potter words
quidditch, apparate, disapparate, lumos, snitch, pensieve, dementor, azkaban, wingardium, leviosa, horcrux, bludger and 376 more...
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Watership Down
Every time there's a group discussion, I'll remember that it's just a bunch of bunnies sitting around and I'll laugh.
copse, lapine, creosote, stoat, kestrel, lollop, bluebottle, warren, myxomatosis
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The Enigma of British Slang
At least to me it is.
completely hatstand, squiffy, kerfuffle, have kittens, bluebottle
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Speak, Memory
Words gathered while reading Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov.
cracknel, shingly, glaucous, stretcherman, goodish, loden, gutticle, percha, plasticine, instar, wellhole, camera-lucida and 357 more...
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animalia
Creatures with interesting names/lives.
salamander, badger, varmint, wombat, skink, tortoise, pika, gnu, pangolin, porpoise, serval, walrus and 53 more...
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a blob of glup
invertebrates, mostly
todal, oyster, scallop, fluke, sea squirt, tunicate, abalone, whelk, sponge, planarian, amoeba, nudibranch and 12 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bluebottle.
madmouth see here. Also known as hurtsickle Jun 4, 2009
johnmperry one of the major characters in The Goon Show Jul 18, 2008