Bluebeard

[bloo-beerd]

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.

Bluebeard

/ 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

Bluebeard

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.

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.

Read more on 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.

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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.

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

Read more on 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.

Read more on New York Times