blue streak

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See also: bluestreak

English

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Etymology

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From the afterimage of a stroke of lightning, which looks like a blue streak across the sky.

Noun

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blue streak

  1. (informal, originally US) A great deal of fast talking, cursing, lying, or similar.
    to talk a blue streak
    • 1847, The Knickerbocker, page 178:
      interspersing his vehement comments with a ‘blue streak’ of oaths
    • 1895 September, The Century Magazine, page 676:
      He calmly lied to me a blue streak, and he knew that I knew he was lying
    • 1951, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Saul, A Streetcar Named Desire, spoken by Blanche (Vivien Leigh):
      This old maid, she had a parrot that cursed a blue streak and knew more vulgar expressions than Mr. Kowalski.
    • 2007, Sue Owens Wright, 150 Activities For Bored Dogs:
      If you leave your dog alone in your backyard for hours at a time, he may be barking a blue streak, too.
  2. A trace left by something that is too quick to see.
    • 1830 May 14, Kentuckian, page 2/5:
      To pass [] with such rapidity as not even to leave a ‘blue streak’ behind him
    • 1867, James Howard, A Trip to America: Two Lectures, page 35:
      An American engineer, who had been in England, described the Express train from Liverpool to London as running a "blue streak," by which he meant going like lightning.
    • 1907, Mark Twain, A Horse's Tale:
      Now then, watch me leave a blue streak behind!
    • 1977, Dick D'Easum, Sawtooth Tales, page 273:
      Running like a blue streak from your old mammy.
    • 2006, Mignon C. Reynolds, Life as Bonkers, page 13:
      She was wild and crazy, and she could run a blue streak.
    • 2014, Leroy Stover, Birmingham First Black in Blue:
      He (the suspect) should know better than to run from my partner Leroy, for he's like a blue streak.

Further reading

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