Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also blue, bluenose) rigidly, repressively puritan.

1843		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 4 Feb. n.p.: I have looked repeatedly, in vain, in your valuable paper to find communications from [this] notoriously blue city [i.e. Hartford, CT].
1884		G.W. Peck Peck’s Boss Book 34: During the talk of the blue-nosed man the President swallowed a bit of tobacco.
1884		Bismarck Trib. (ND) 11 Apr. 2/2: Labouchere writing of English society women heads his article ‘Bluenosed, Naked and Ashamed.’ Bluenosed? Naked? By jove they ought to be ashamed.
1906		Eve. World (NY) 22 Nov. 18/4: In about two weeks this period of Puritanical, blue-nosed, stern and inflexible reform wears out.
1917		E. O’Neill Long Voyage Home (1923) 26: The Captain and Mate wus Bluenose devils.
1936		J.T. Farrell World I Never Made 291: All the reform people are yelping like chickens [...] They are the ones who like blue laws.
1946		W.L. Gresham Nightmare Alley (1947) 45: We’ve had enough trouble with the wheels pretty near getting shut down for gambling. This is bluenose.
1948		Atlantic Monthly Mar. 25/1: Hypercritical bluenosed censorship [DA].
1959		F. Bowers Textual and Literary Crit. (1966) 112: It is an ignorant vieww, and a positive misconception, that bibliography acts as a blue-nosed and puritanical censor to take all the joy out of the textual critic’s life .
1985		B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 6: If you’re a blue-nosed wowser […] , a stuffed shirt, a raving pillow-biter or a loony old lezzo.
1989		Kirk & Madsen After The Ball 302: Any restraint is, itself, suspect of being a sign of self-hatred and blue-nosery.
1996		H. Roth From Bondage 382: I haven’t got your blue-nosed Pilgrim ancestry.

2. (also bluenose) pertaining to being a New Englander, esp. as blue-nosed Yankee.

1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 87: General Johnston was retreating, and the bluenosed Yankees were to pollute our sacred soil the next morning.
1926		J. Doone Timely Tips For New Australians 10: As regards picturesque slang [...] the Australian is blest with an originality which even a ‘blue nose’ Yankee sea-captain could not excel.
1938		W.J. Dakin Whalemen Adventurers 37: The brimstone quality of the language used; the Tasmanian Bay whaleman was as tough as any blue-nosed Yankee.
1943		J. Mitchell McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon (2001) 42: I’m a bluenosed Yankee, fed on codfish and cranberries.
1948		Range Riders Western May 108/2: I’ll say what I got to say standin’ up, you danged blue-nose Yankee! [DA].
1956		‘George Eliot’ Caleb Pettingell 50: Count yourself lucky you’re a blue-nosed Yankee, Pettengill.
1980		R.L. Taylor Naigara 126: Oh, well, you’re a blue-nosed Yankee anyway. Come along.
2001		(ref. to 1905) A. Delbanco Writing New Eng. 424: But his stock in trade was an appeal to Irish rage against the ‘blue-nosed Yankee bigots.’ In 1905, he rode that anger into the Mayors office.

3. snobbish.

1958

Murtagh & Harris Cast the First Stone 12: There are other clubs that are as elegant and expensive, only not so blue-nosed.