A bluestocking is a woman who cares more about books, ideas, and study than about parties, clothes, or impressing men. In older British English it could sound disapproving — as if she had stepped out of her “proper” place — and some people still use it that way, with a little sniff. The history is kinder than the sniff. In the 1700s, Elizabeth Montagu and others held gatherings in London where women and men talked about literature, on the model of Paris salons. The name Blue Stockings goes back further: in the 1600s it was already linked with plain blue stockings, the cheaper kind men wore instead of expensive white or black formal ones, and then with the Barebones Parliament. Later it stuck to those literary evenings. The first recorded use points at a man, Benjamin Stillingfleet, who was not rich enough to wear the “proper” dress and came in blue stockings. The women of the circle were not the ones wearing blue stockings, and the label was not born as an insult. Today the word feels dated and bookish. Younger speakers rarely use it. When they do, it often still carries that old, slightly unkind flavour, so handle it with care.

女學究、藍襪（舊稱愛讀書的女性，語氣有時帶貶；源於18世紀倫敦文藝沙龍，不是真的穿藍襪）