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Glite Dictionary
📝 An exam booklet 👑 A society list 📘 An official report
blue book

blue book

9.0
A book listing important people and families with high social status
  • noun
  • /blu bʊk/
  • Archaic
translation icon : libro azul

Examples

  • The blue book on her desk gained weight.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • The blue book provided an extensive list of influential families in the city.

  • In her role as a socialite, she often referred to the blue book to network with high-profile individuals.

  • The latest edition of the blue book features prominent leaders and their contributions to the community.

Surface Forms

blue book singular
blue books plural

Morphology

blue + book

The literal reading 'a book that is blue' follows directly from combining 'blue' and 'book', so the composition is partly transparent. However, the specialized institutional meaning—an exam answer booklet used at colleges—is an idiomatic, culture-specific extension that is not fully predictable from the constituents and may require exposure or contextual knowledge, so it is only partially transparent to learners.

Etymology

Blue book comes from old printed lists of important people that were often bound as blue books, so a name in the blue book showed someone was part of 'high society'.