The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bluebottle \Blue"bot`tle\, blue-bottle \blue-bottle\, n.
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(Bot.) an annual Eurasian plant ( Centaurea cyanus) which grows in grain fields; -- called also bachelor's button. It receives its name from its blue bottle-shaped flowers. Varieties cultivated in North America have showy heads of blue or purple or pink or white flowers
Syn: cornflower, bachelor's button.
(Zo["o]l.) A large and troublesome species of blowfly ( Musca vomitoria). Its body is steel blue.
Usage examples of "blue-bottle".
The door wanted to rattle when I touched it: it was flimsy, meant to keep out nothing stronger than a blue-bottle fly.
It beat one hundred and fifty times a minute, steadily, and the little whining tremor was still in her marrow, as if each bone of her body had a blue-bottle fly imprisoned in it, hovering, buzzing, shaking, quivering deep, deep, deep.
They pulled things out, stuck things in, sprayed me, jabbed me, tapped and tested, conferred, complained, ran back and forth, shone lights in my eyes, hit me with little hammers, poked things down my throat, held buzzers to my ears, asked questions and bitched at each other in high, whining voices like blue-bottle flies around a honey wagon.