Blueprint

How to spell blueprint

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blueprint

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blueprint mean?

1. nounA detailed technical drawing of a building, machine, or other construction.
2. nounA detailed model or scheme that serves as a guide for achieving something.

Blueprint in a sentence

• The architect rolled out the blueprint across the table.

• The report offered a clear blueprint for cutting costs over five years.

• The engineers checked the blueprint before pouring the foundations.

• Her thesis became a blueprint for later research in the field.

Where does blueprint come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from a nineteenth-century photographic copying process called the cyanotype, which was developed by the English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel in 1842. The technique coated paper with iron salts that, once exposed to light and washed, turned a deep Prussian blue everywhere except where the lines of a drawing had blocked the light, so a design appeared as crisp white lines on a vivid blue background. Architects and engineers seized on the method because it allowed cheap, accurate reproductions of large technical drawings, and the resulting copies were simply called blue prints, later joined into one word. The literal meaning, a detailed technical plan, soon broadened into a figurative one: any precise scheme or model for getting something done. The spelling is reassuringly transparent because it is just the everyday words 'blue' and 'print' set side by side, even though modern plans are rarely blue any more.

How the word is built

• blue (the colour)
• print (an impression or copy)