blue shirt

blue shirt (plural blue shirts)

1. An Alaska State Trooper.
   • 2013, C. B. Bernard, Chasing Alaska: A Portrait of the Last Frontier Then and Now, →ISBN, page 233:

     The divisions overlap at some points, like Soldotna and Anchor Point -- blue shirts handling criminal and traffic complaints, brown shirts sticking to more mission-related issues -- but in Cordova the wildlife troopers cover all law enforcement that falls under the state's jurisdiction.

   • 2015, Ron Dalby, Pipeline, →ISBN:

     “Frankly, I never thought of the brown shirts when I asked the blue shirts to attend this meeting,” Commissioner Burton admitted, “but you're right. If we are going to get a hint of something bad going on in the back country, these are the guys most likely to sniff it out..."

2. A sailor who works on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, securing aircraft to the deck.
   • 1988, United States Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval Historical Center, Naval aviation news, page 21:

     Blue shirts are responsible for handling and securing squadron aircraft with chocks and chains. Although their work is mostly manual and considered the low end of the totem pole, the success of flight operations depends on it.

   • 1992, Approach - Volume 37, Issue 7:

     Then, out of the comer of my eye, I saw a blue shirt get blown down the flight deck.

   • 2014, Mark Piggott, The Dark Tides, →ISBN, page 9:

     Just give me Georgie, Bartman and a couple blue shirts and we'll lock it down.

3. (US, medicine) An emergency medical service worker; a paramedic.
   • 2002, J. A. Karam, Into the Breach: A Year of Life and Death with EMS, New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 61:

     If a prosecutor argues a case in which a blue-shirt was murdered on the job, attacks on a rescuer may be a factor in seeking the death penalty.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blue,‎ shirt.

• Bushitler, thuribles