talk a blue streak

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

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Verb

talk a blue streak (third-person singular simple present talks a blue streak, present participle talking a blue streak, simple past and past participle talked a blue streak)

1. (originally US) To talk for a long duration of time, at a rapid pace without giving others a chance to speak, or to the point of tedium.

   She's normally a quiet person, but she will talk a blue streak about fashion, if you let her.

   • 1895, Susan Hale, Letters, published 1919, page 289:

     talking a blue streak two miles to her house

   • 1994, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, Houghton Mifflin, →ISBN, pages 4–5:

     Some days, I'd sit with Jason reading the Times in the living room and I'd talk a blue streak, presenting him with all my theories about, say, the deterioration of the American family in the late twentieth century and how it all relates to the decline of an agrarian society.

   • 2005, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain, spoken by Randall Malone (David Harbour):

     Don't know. Even if I wanted to know, couldn't get a word in with Lashawn long enough to ask. Woman talks a blue streak.

Translations

See also

• blue streak
• talk nineteen to the dozen

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2024) “blue streak n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• Grammarist