blunket

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English plunket (noun), from plunket (“of a blue or greyish colour”, adj), perhaps the past participle of *plunken (“to cover with lead or lead-colouring”), from Old French plonquier, plonchier (“to cover with lead”), in imitation of Old French plunkié, plonquié (“lead-coloured", also "grey cloth”); ultimately from Latin plumbum (“lead”). The adjective is attested earlier than the noun, yet it remains unclear whether the fabric (which often retained the spelling plunket) gave its name to the color or the other way around. The word is similar to blanket (“cloth”), inviting speculation that it derives (like that word) from Old French blanchet, blanquet (“whitish”), but the most common form even as late as Early Modern English was blunket, and some early works seem to identify it as dark red or violet, which makes that theory phonologically and semantically problematic.[1][2]

Adjective[edit]

blunket (comparative more blunket, superlative most blunket)

  1. (obsolete) Gray; grayish or light blue.

Noun[edit]

blunket (countable and uncountable, plural blunkets)

  1. (obsolete) A color, generally a light bluish gray or blue or gray, but sometimes seemingly a dark red or violet.
  2. (obsolete) A cloth, or kind of cloth (blanket cloth), generally but not always of this color.
    • 1672, chapter 27, in Janua Linguarum Reserata: Sive, Omnium Scientiarum & Linguarum Seminarium: […] The Gate of Languages Unlocked […] formerly translated by Tho. Horn: afterwards much corrected and amended by Joh. Robotham: now carefully reviewed by W. D.:
      some of a watchet [like blue blunkets]

References[edit]

references
  1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.:
    Blunket, a. and sb. Obs. Forms: 5-7 blanket, 6 bluncket, blancket, bloncket, bloncat, 7 blonket, 5-8 blunket. [It is uncertain whether the adj. sense gave its name to the fabric, or whether the name of the fabric was transferred to its colour. The original form of the word is also doubtful, though blunket is both the earliest and by far the most frequent. This makes it doubtful whether it can have been an adoption of OF. blanquet, var. of blanchet, dim. of blanc white (and thus originally the same as blanket), a derivation which would to some extent suit the sense.] A. adj. Grey, greyish blue, light blue.
    1488 Lord High. Treas. Accts. (Jam.) For x elne and j quarter of blanket caresay to be hoe. c 1534 Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (1846) I. 74 Thei weare called Pictes .. ether of their bluncket heres, ether of certaine marckes made with whot irons. a 1552 Leland Brit. Coll. III. 138 Caesius, gray of colour, or blunket. 1552 Huloet, Blancket coloure, caesius. 1579 Spenser Sheph. Cal. May 5 Our bloncket liueryes [gloss, gray coates] bene all to sadde. 1612 Cotgr., Couleur perse, skie colour. Azure colour, a Blunket, or light blue. 1622 Peacham Compl. Gentl. (1661) 155 Blanket colour, i.e. a light watchet. 1657 W. Coles Adam in Eden cxxxv, Gilloflowers of such variable colours .. Horseflesh, blunket, purple, and white. 1783 Ainsworth Lat. Dict. Caesius, gray, sky-coloured, with specks of gray blunket.
    B. sb. A fabric presumably of light grey or blue colour; possibly the same as blanket sb. 1.
    c 1440 Gaw. & Galar. ii. 3 (Jam.) Here belte was of blunket. 1541 Aberd. Reg. (Jam.) Three elln of bloncat. 1600 Queen's Wardrobe in Nichols Progr. Q. Elis. III. 506 One rounde kirtle of white clothe of silver chevernd, with bluncket, with lace of golde.
  2. ^ James Robinson Planché, A Cyclopaedia of Costume Or Dictionary of Dress, Including Notices of Contemporaneous Fashions on the Continent: The Dictionary (1876), page 400:
    PLUNKET. [...] But plunket in the fifteenth century was the name of a colour:—"PLUNKET (coloure), jacinctus" ('Prompt. Parv.'); to which Mr. Way's note is as follows:—"'Plonkete,' or in another MS. 'blunket,' occurs in the 'Awntyks of Arthure,' and is explained by Sir F. Madden as signifying 'white stuff.'"
    "Hir belte was of plonkete with burdies fulle baulde."
    In Mr. Robson's edition, "blenket," st. xxix.; possibly the white stuff called in French blanchet. "Ploncket: colour blew." (Palsg.) "Caesius: graye of colour or blunkette, Scyricum blunket colour or light watchet. Venetus: lught blewe or blunket." (Elyot.) "Couleur pers.: skie colour, a blunket or light blue." (Colgrave.) The old gloss on Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar, May,' explains it as signifying grey. (See Nares and Jamieson, v. "Bloncat.") Here is a mass of contradictory information that is perfectly bewildering. A jacinth (hyacinth) is not white, nor grey, nor blue. It is a gem of the family of the garnets, and the Syrian is sometimes of a fine violet colour. This is the colour always indicated by hyacinthus or jacintus in mediaeval writings; but, apart from this, are we to consider that the cloths called "plunkets" gave their name to the colour, or that the colour, whichever it was, gave its name to the material? Of "the long coloured cloths called 'plunkets,'" some are described as celestines. These might have been of "the lyght blewe" or "skie colour" called "blunket" by Elyot and Cotgrave. They were distinguished by broad lists; but if not from the French blanchet, where no doubt "blanket," manufactured here as early as the reign of Edward III.,* where are we to seek the derivation of the word "plunket" either as applied to a cloth or a colour?
    *According to some glossarists, blanket took its name from one Thomas Blanket, who first set up a loom at Bristol in 1340.

Further reading[edit]

Norwegian Bokmål[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Verb[edit]

blunket

  1. inflection of blunke:
    1. simple past
    2. past participle
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