blue light

plural blue lights

1. countablehistoricaluncountablenauticalA mixture of chemicals (including nitre, sulfur and antimony) used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for night-time signaling and general illumination.First known use 18th c.

   Blue lights, or blue fire, is a preparation in which zinc and sulphur, or sulphur alone, are used. The particular colour is communicated by the zinc and sulphur.

   1828, Samuel Frederick Gray, The Operative Chemist, page 499

   2 more examples

   The blue-light, which, at its first flashing over the ocean, had made the very stars pale their lustre, and lighted up with ghastly radiance the enormous vault of heaven, was now only a point […].

   1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 57

   When the 'Canandaigua' got astern, and was lying athwart, of the 'Housatonic,' about four ship lengths off, while I was in the fore rigging, I saw a blue light on the water just ahead of the 'Canandaigua,' and on the starboard quarter of the 'Housatonic.'

   2015, Mark K. Ragan, quoting Robert Fleming, Proceedings of a Naval Court of Inquiry into the Sinking of the Housatonic, 1864, quoted in Confederate Saboteurs, Texas A&M University Press, →ISBN, page 98

   Synonyms: Bengal fire, Bengal light

2. UScolloquialcountablehistoricaluncountableA New England federalist, who opposed the Anglo-American War of 1812; (loosely), a federalist.First known use 19th c.

   The “Blue-Light Elder” knows ’em well; / Says he, “That’s Banks — he’s fond of shell; / Lord save his soul! We’ll give him” — well, / that’s “Stonewall Jackson’s Way.”

   1862, John Williamson Palmer, Stonewall Jackson's Way

3. countableA flashing light, usually fitted to an emergency vehicle.First known use 20th c.

   Blue-light escorts were provided where possible to get engineers to the stranded GTR trains to reset the software.

   2019 October, Roger Ford, “Power failure highlights specification confusion”, in Modern Railways, page 26

   Synonyms: cherry light, lightbar

4. countableuncountableUsed other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blue, light.

present singular third person blue lights · participle present blue lighting · participle past blue lighted · past blue lighted · participle past blue lit · past blue lit

1. informalintransitiveTo travel quickly in a police or ambulance vehicle with the lightbar (and possibly the siren) activated.

   Roger that. Feds and green army are blue lighting to you.

   2014, James Rennie, The Operators, Pen and Sword, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   When we weren't blue lighting, we had to obey the 30 mph limit, but out of town we had a training exemption from any speed regulations and were encouraged to push the car to its limits... and we did.

   2011, John Donoghue, Police, Crime & 999, Troubador Publishing, →ISBN

   They jumped into his cruiser and blue-lighted it to Boston Medical Center at eighty miles per hour.

   2012, Jon Mukand, The Man with the Bionic Brain, Chicago Review Press, →ISBN