Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The blueweed, Echium vulgare, a pest in the middle Atlantic States.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • He kept turning and crying out to Carmichael-Smith - it reminded me somehow of how my old guv'nor had wept and pleaded when I saw him off for the last time to the blue-devil factory in the country where he died bawling with delirium tremens.

    Fiancée 2010

  • George Custer, and the White Raja, to say nothing of my beloved mentor, Dr Arnold, and my old guv'nor (who did end his days in a blue-devil factory, bless him).

    Flashman and the Mountain of Light Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1990

  • George Custer, and the White Raja, to say nothing of my beloved mentor, Dr Arnold, and my old guv'nor (who did end his days in a blue-devil factory, bless him).

    Flashman And The Mountain Of Light Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1990

  • Since then we'd been on civil-sneer terms, for the guv'nor's sake, but since he'd recently been carted away again to the blue-devil factory to have the booze bogies chased out of his brain, Judy was devoting her time to being Elspeth's companion - oh, we were a conventional little menage, sure enough.

    Flashman's Lady Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1977

  • He kept turning and crying out to Carmichael-Smith - it reminded me somehow of how my old guv'nor had wept and pleaded when I saw him off for the last time to the blue-devil factory in the country where he died bawling with delirium tremens.

    Flashman In The Great Game Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1975

  • He kept turning and crying out to Carmichael-Smith — it reminded me somehow of how my old guv'nor had wept and pleaded when I saw him off for the last time to the blue-devil factory in the country where he died bawling with delirium tremens.

    Flashman In The Great Game Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1975

  • He loves to think he suffers, and keeps a pet sorrow, a blue-devil familiar, that goes with him everywhere, like Paracelsus's black dog.

    Among My Books First Series James Russell Lowell 1855

  • I then told him all my mishaps in Sorombo, as well as of the "blue-devil" frights that had seized all my men.

    The Discovery of the Source of the Nile John Hanning Speke 1845

  • There now, this cursed, gloomy, blue-devil day, you are going to a party of choice spirits --

    The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. With a New Life of the Poet, and Notices, Critical and Biographical by Allan Cunningham Robert Burns 1777

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