BLUEBOTTLE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Bluebottle

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/blˈubˌɔtəl/ Listen

noun

blue-bottle, Bluebottle 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

Synonyms: cornflower, bachelor's button.

(Zool.) A large and troublesome species of blowfly (Musca vomitoria). Its body is steel blue.

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Etymology of 'Bluebottle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Bluebottle" Quotes from Famous Books

... brought a store of food, it does not imply much. To test this, therefore, I made several experiments. For instance, one cold day my Ants were almost all in their nests. One only was out hunting and about six feet from home. I took a dead bluebottle fly, pinned it on to a piece of cork, and put it down just in front of her. She at once tried to carry off the fly, but to her surprise found it immovable. She tugged and tugged, first one way and then another for about twenty ...

— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... and her monkey from playing tricks on his bear, who, by some fatality, always sat in front, with his irresistible broad back, down which, in spite of all her vigilance, Jock had once thrust a large bluebottle fly. She also knew that both her husband and his mother would have thought she ought to go to Church, and that if matters went amiss with her boy, she should reproach herself with the omission. Her children, too, ...

— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge