Blueliner

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A defensive player in ice hockey who skates along the team's own end of the rink and guards against attacks
2. In ice hockey, a defenceman whose role is to keep opposing players from advancing past the blue lines
3. A hockey player who plays defense, positioned near the blue lines to stop opponents from entering the zone

Etymology: A blueliner is a defenseman in ice hockey who is a regular player on the team's blue line, the one of the two lines flanking the center of the rink. The word is simply a compound of "blue" and "liner," with "liner" meaning a player or thing that occupies a line, and it takes its meaning from the blue line itself. That line is the stripe painted across the rink that divides the neutral zone from each team's defensive zone, and it is the reason the word exists: the defensemen who patrol it earned a name from the stripe they guard. The blue line itself dates to the early days of organized hockey. Its purpose was to make the game flow, since a forward pass across it was once forbidden, and it is the line that offside calls are measured against. The compound's logic is therefore spatial rather than metaphorical: a player who spends the game near that stripe is a "blueliner" in the same way a liner in older usage was a thing that marked out a line.

Synonyms: defenseman, defenceman, backliner

Antonyms: forward, winger