"blue peter" meaning in English

See blue peter in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: blue peters [plural]
Etymology: The flag, serving as a signal of recall for departure, was used by the British Navy from 1777, and the name “blue peter” had become common by the end of the 18th century. An all-blue flag had earlier seen use for the same purpose by the Dutch East India Company. While “blue” obviously refers to the dominant colour of the flag, the origin of the second part of the term, “peter”, is unknown. Often said to be a corruption of “blue repeater”, there is actually no signal flag that goes by that designation. The use of the flag to spell the letter “P” dates from 1857 and so cannot have played a role in the origin of the term. The whist play, introduced by Lord Henry Bentinck, was named by him after the flag. Head templates: {{en-noun}} blue peter (plural blue peters)
  1. (nautical) A blue signal flag with a white rectangle in the centre, signifying "P". When flown alone, indicates that a ship is ready to sail, requiring all crew members and passengers to return on board. Categories (topical): Nautical, Flags Translations (signal flag): pavillon de partance (French)
    Sense id: en-blue_peter-en-noun-gtuaI5N9 Disambiguation of Flags: 53 21 25 Topics: nautical, transport Disambiguation of 'signal flag': 100 0
  2. (card games, intransitive) In whist, a play that calls for trumps by throwing away a higher card of a suit while holding a lower one. Tags: intransitive Categories (topical): Card games Categories (lifeform): Rallids
    Sense id: en-blue_peter-en-noun-QT2Ncjvi Disambiguation of Rallids: 32 54 15 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with French translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 32 48 20 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 32 48 20 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 33 50 17 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 31 53 16 Disambiguation of Terms with French translations: 27 51 22 Topics: card-games, games

Verb

Forms: blue peters [present, singular, third-person], blue petering [participle, present], blue petered [participle, past], blue petered [past]
Etymology: The flag, serving as a signal of recall for departure, was used by the British Navy from 1777, and the name “blue peter” had become common by the end of the 18th century. An all-blue flag had earlier seen use for the same purpose by the Dutch East India Company. While “blue” obviously refers to the dominant colour of the flag, the origin of the second part of the term, “peter”, is unknown. Often said to be a corruption of “blue repeater”, there is actually no signal flag that goes by that designation. The use of the flag to spell the letter “P” dates from 1857 and so cannot have played a role in the origin of the term. The whist play, introduced by Lord Henry Bentinck, was named by him after the flag. Head templates: {{en-verb}} blue peter (third-person singular simple present blue peters, present participle blue petering, simple past and past participle blue petered)
  1. (card games, intransitive) In whist, to play a blue peter. Tags: intransitive Categories (topical): Card games Synonyms: Blue Peter
    Sense id: en-blue_peter-en-verb-xWCiaYsd Topics: card-games, games

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.