blue-blooded
See also: blueblooded
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
blue blood + -ed
Adjective
blue-blooded (comparative more blue-blooded, superlative most blue-blooded)
- Aristocratic or patrician.
- 1887, Katherine Prescott Wormeley, transl., The Two Brothers[1], translation of La Rabouilleuse by Honoré de Balzac:
- Fario was a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee.
- [1889 January], Rudyard Kipling, “A Second-rate Woman”, in Under the Deodars (A. H. Wheeler & Co.’s Indian Railway Library; no. 4), Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh: A[rthur] H[enry] Wheeler & Co.; London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 73:
- But, as I was saying, we listened and heard The Dowd drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g’s like a barmaid or a blue-blooded Aide-de-Camp.
- 1908, Upton Sinclair, chapter XII, in The Metropolis[2]:
- The Major was the very type of a blue-blooded old aristocrat; he was all noblesse oblige to those within the magic circle of his intimacy—but alas for those outside it!
- 1965, Ervin Drake, “It Was a Very Good Year”, performed by Frank Sinatra:
- When I was thirty-five / It was a very good year / It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls / Of independent means / We'd ride in limousines
Derived terms
- blue-bloodedness
Related terms
Translations
aristocratic or patrician
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