Bluebeard

American  

[bloo-beerd] / ˈbluˌbɪərd /

noun

1. a fairy-tale character whose seventh wife found the bodies of her predecessors in a room she had been forbidden to enter.

2. any man alleged to have murdered a number of his wives or other women.

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Bluebeard British  

/ ˈbluːˌbɪəd /

noun

1. a villain in European folk tales who marries several wives and murders them in turn. In many versions the seventh and last wife escapes the fate of the others

2. a man who has had several wives

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Bluebeard Cultural  

1. A fairy tale character from the Charles Perrault collection. The character is a monstrous villain who marries seven women in turn and warns them not to look behind a certain door of his castle. Inside the room are the corpses of his former wives. Bluebeard kills six wives for their disobedience before one passes his test.

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Other Word Forms

• Bluebeardism noun

Example Sentences

A prosecutor called him “the greatest cold-blooded killer since Bluebeard,” and a judge called him the most evil defendant he’d ever seen.

From Los Angeles Times

Davies is not a great hall acoustically, but on my recent visit, Salonen conducted the most sonically astounding performance of Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” I have ever heard.

From Los Angeles Times

A further revelation came after intermission with an even more impressive concert performance of Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” that demonstrated the radical difference between theater and synesthesia.

From Los Angeles Times

In “A Bluebeard of Wives,” Mark ponders her place as her husband’s third spouse.

From Washington Post

In “Bluebeard,” it’s intimate — the slow-burning drama of a wife unveiling her new husband’s pained world, to the destruction of them both.

From New York Times