What is a Bluestocking?

18th century - The Bluestockings attempted to replace social evenings spent playing cards with something more intellectual. The term probably originated when one of the ladies, Elizabeth Vesey, invited Benjamin Stillingfleet to one of her parties; he declined because he lacked appropriate dress, whereupon she told him to come “in his blue stockings”—the ordinary worsted stockings he was wearing at the time. He did so, and Bluestocking (or Bas Bleu) society became a nickname for the group. This anecdote was later recounted by Madame d’Arblay (the diarist and novelist better known as Frances Burney), who was closely associated with (and also satirized) the Bluestockings.

— from Brittanica.com

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