Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a Nova Scotian.

1863		A.L. Spedon Rambles 35: I also felt a sort of quivering curiosity to see a New Brunswick ‘Blue Noser’.
1908		J.H. Williams Blow the Man Down (1959) 49: The second mate, whose name was Prettyman, was a tall, lanky, loose-jointed, squint-eyed ‘Bluenoser’ from the wilds of Nova Scotia.
1918		Garland City Globe (UT) 21 Nov. 6/3: The Cushko was a ‘lime juicer’ sailing under the english fkag. The skipper was a ‘lime-juicer,’ the first mate a ‘blue noser’.
1934		Yachting LV 74/2: Captain Dixon was a Nova Scotian, a ‘Bluenoser’ [Ibid.] 89/1: One of a considerable family of a ‘Bluenoser’ and a Maine woman who met and wed in California.
1968		H. Brown Quiet Place to Work 221: Went partners then with an old Bluenoser named Swasey, Capt John Swasey. We bought this hermaphrodite brig.
1999		Nova Scotia Handball 🌐 The 1999 Bluenoser Handball Championships were held at the ‘West Point’ Racquet Club in Halifax this past weekend.
2004		F. Mowat Sea of Slaughter 157: Our radio op, who was a Bluenoser from Lunenburg [in Nova Scotia], was so pissed off.

2. a Nova-Scotian ship.

1883		J.T. Keane On Blue-Water 178: No sailor would think of joining a ‘blue-noser’ (as a Nova-Scotian ship is called) until reduced to the last degree of destitution. [Ibid.] 206: I’ve been in a few regular scorching hot packets, both Yanks and blue-nosers, but this puts the capper on the lot.
1922		Blackwood’s Mag. CCXI 443: To be shanghaied on board a Bluenoser was regarded as the hardest fate that could befall a seaman.

3. a fanatical puritan.

1973		G. Sheehy Hustling 42: A blue-noser’s battle against sexual liberation [HDAS].
1992		L. Goldensohn Elizabeth Bishop 17: [...] and yet be a New Englander-herring-choker-bluenoser at the same time.