Blubber Head, subs. (common).—A foolish, empty-headed individual.—See Apartments to let.
Blucher (ch. hard), subs. (Winchester College).—1. A College præfect in half power. Their jurisdiction does not extend beyond 'Seventh Chamber passage,' though their privileges are the same as those of other præfects. They are eight in number.
1864. Blackwood, p. 86. The remaining eight college præfects (called in Winchester tongue, bluchers) have a more limited authority, confined to Chambers and the Quadrangle.
1870. Mansfield, School-Life at Winchester College, p. 30. The eight senior præfects were said to have 'full power,' and had some slight privileges not enjoyed by the remaining ten, who were generally called bluchers.
2. A non-privileged cab plying at railway stations. The origin of the name and its application, as far as known, is given in the two following quotations.
1864. Soc. Sc. Review, I., p. 406. The railway companies recognise two other classes of cabs, called the 'privileged' . . . and the 'Bluchers,' named after the Prussian Field-Marshal who arrived on the field of Waterloo only to do the work that chanced to be undone.
1870. Athenæum, 5 March, p. 328. Non-privileged cabs, which are admitted to stations after all the privileged have been hired, are known as Bluchers.
Bludgeoner, subs. (harlotry).—A bully; pimp; ponce; a man attached to a house of ill-fame for the purpose of terrorising victims, and rendering easier the task of plunder. [From bludgeon, a stout stick or club, + er or eer; i.e., one armed with the weapon in question.]
1852. Blackwood's Magazine, p. 224. Those brutal bludgeoneers . . . go out . . . in gangs to poach. [m.]
1855. Trollope, Warden, xiv., p. 144. Old St. Dunstan with its smiting bludgeoneer has been removed.
Bludger, subs. (thieves').—A low thief, who does not hesitate to use violence; literally one who will use a bludgeon. Cf., Bludget.
1856. H. Mayhew, Gt. World of London, p. 46. Those who plunder with violence; as . . . bludgers or 'stick slingers,' who rob in company with low women.
Bludget, subs. (American).—This is given in the New York Slang Dictionary [1881] as 'a low female thief, who decoys her victims into alley-ways, etc., to rob them.' Cf., Bludger.
Blue.—Few words enter more largely into the composition of slang, and colloquialisms bordering on slang, than does the word blue. Expressive alike of the utmost contempt, as of all that men hold dearest and love best, its manifold combinations, in ever varying shades of meaning, greet the philologist at every turn. A very Proteus, it defies all attempts to trace the why and wherefore of many of the turns of expression of which it forms a part—why true blue should be synonymous with faithful, staunch adherence to one's faith and principles; or why, on the other hand, to look blue should signify affected with fear, dismayed, and low-spirited. Curiously enough, the historical method helps but little to decide why in one case an exact reversal of meaning should have taken place in the appli-
