bluestocking

Learned woman; the term is often used disparagingly. It originated in 1750 in England with the literary gatherings of Elizabeth Vesey (1715–1791), the wife of an Irish MP, in Bath, and Elizabeth Montagu, a writer and patron, in London. According to the novelist Fanny Burney, the term arose when the poet Benjamin Stillingfleet protested that he had nothing formal to wear. She told him to come in his ‘blue stockings’ – that is, ordinary clothes. The regulars at these gatherings became known as the Blue Stocking Circle.