Nearby Words

Blueprint

[bloo-print] Origin

blue·print

[bloo-print]
noun
1.
a process of photographic printing, used chiefly in copying architectural and mechanical drawings, which produces a white line on a blue background.
2.
a print made by this process.
3.
a detailed outline or plan of action: a blueprint for success.
verb (used with object)
4.
to make a blueprint of or for.

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Blueprint is one of our favorite verbs.
So is absquatulate. Does it mean:
to swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax.
to flee; abscond:

Origin:
1885–90; blue + print

blue·print·er, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source Link To Blueprint
Collins
World English Dictionary
blueprint (ˈbluːˌprɪnt)
 
n
1.  Also called: cyanotype a photographic print of plans, technical drawings, etc, consisting of white lines on a blue background
2.  an original plan or prototype that influences subsequent design or practice: the Montessori method was the blueprint for education in the 1940s
 
vb
3.  (tr) to make a blueprint of (a plan)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline
Word Origin & History

blueprint
1886, from blue + print. Figurative sense of "detailed plan" is attested from 1926.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia

blueprint

type of print used for copying engineering drawings and similar material. The name is popularly applied to two separate methods, more exactly designated as the blueprint and the whiteprint, or diazotype. In blueprinting, the older method, the drawing to be copied, made on translucent tracing cloth or paper, is placed in contact with paper sensitized with a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, which is then exposed to light. In the areas of the sensitized paper not obscured by the lines of the drawing, the light reduces the ferric salt to the ferrous state, in which it reacts with the potassium ferricyanide to form insoluble prussian blue. The exposed paper is then washed in water, producing a negative in which the lines of the drawing appear in white against a dark blue background

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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