Bluebeard definitions

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: (fairytale) a monstrous villain who marries seven women; he kills the first six for disobedience

Merriam Webster's

noun Usage: often capitalized Etymology: Bluebeard, a fairy-tale character Date: 1822 a man who marries and kills one wife after another

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a man who murders his wives. 2 a person with a horrible secret. Etymology: a character in a fairy-tale told orig. in F (Barbe-Bleue) by Perrault

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Bluebeard Blue"beard, n. The hero of a medi[ae]val French nursery legend, who, leaving home, enjoined his young wife not to open a certain room in his castle. She entered it, and found the murdered bodies of his former wives. -- Also used adjectively of a subject which it is forbidden to investigate. The Bluebeard chamber of his mind, into which no eye but his own must look. --Carlyle.