Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various coloring agents used to counteract the yellowing of laundered fabrics.
  • noun A rinsing agent used to give a silver tint to gray or graying hair.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A disease of pine timber which causes it to assume a blue color. It is due to the pyrenomycetous fungus, Ceratostomella pilifera.
  • noun The act of making blue; specifically, the process of giving a blue color to iron and other metals by heating.
  • noun A blue tint given to iron by boiling in a bath of hyposulphite of soda and acetate of lead.
  • noun The indigo, soluble Prussian blue, or other material, used in the laundry to give a bluish tint to linen. Also spelled blueing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of rendering blue.
  • noun Something, as indigo or other preparations, used to give a bluish tint, especially to white clothing when being washed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of blue.
  • noun A substance used in laundry to whiten clothes; blue
  • noun Any of several processes to protect steel against rust

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a process that makes something blue (or bluish)
  • noun used to whiten laundry or hair or give it a bluish tinge

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

blue +‎ -ing

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Examples

Comments

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  • At one time white-haired ladies used a little bit of bluing to counteract the yellow tinge in their hair; a bit too much and the hair was blue; hence, bluehairs.

    July 21, 2015