blue
UK /bluː/ · US /blu/ adjective, noun, verb, proper noun
Forms bluer bluest blues blueing bluing blued blew blewe
- adjective Of a blue hue. “the deep blue sea”
- adjective (informal) Depressed, melancholic, sad.
- adjective Having a bluish or purplish shade to the skin due to a lack of oxygen to the normally deep-red red blood cells; cyanotic. “My hands were blue with cold.”
- adjective (of a flame) Pale, without redness or glare. “The candle burns blue.”
- adjective (US politics) Supportive of, run by (a member of), pertaining to, or dominated by the Democratic Party. “I live in a blue constituency. Congress turned blue in the mid-term elections.”
- adjective (Australian politics) Supportive of or related to the Liberal Party. “Illawarra turns blue in Liberal washout”
- adjective (UK politics) Supportive of or related to the Conservative Party.
- adjective (astronomy) Of, dominated by, or shifted toward the higher-frequency, or "bluer", end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- noun (countable and uncountable) The colour of the clear sky or the deep sea; the colour midway between green and violet in the visible spectrum and one of the primary additive colours.
- noun Anything coloured blue, especially to distinguish it from similar objects differing only in colour. “I don't like red Smarties. Have you got a blue?”
- noun A blue dye or pigment.
- noun (uncountable) Blue clothing. “The boys in blue marched to the pipers.”
- noun (in the plural) A blue uniform. See blues.
- noun A member of a sports team that wears blue colours; (in the plural) a nickname for the team as a whole. See also blues.
- noun (baseball, slang) An umpire, in reference to the typical dark-blue colour of the umpire's uniform. Sometimes perceived by umpires as derogatory when used by players or coaches while disputing a call.
- noun Sporting colours awarded by a university or other institution for sporting achievement, such as representing one's university, especially and originally at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England. See also full blue, half blue.
- verb (ergative) To make or become blue; to turn blue.
- verb (transitive, metallurgy) To treat the surface of steel so that it is passivated chemically and becomes more resistant to rust.
- verb (transitive, laundry) To brighten by treating with blue (laundry aid).
- verb (intransitive, Australia, slang) To fight, brawl, or argue.
Synonyms
miserable unhappy atrabiliary atrabilious blitheless dispirited bummed out chapfallen cheerless chopfallen crestfallen cut up damp dejected depressed despondent disgruntled disconsolate disheartened dismal blueness blue sky blue air wild blue yonder bluing blueing amobarbital sodium blue angel blue devil Amytal
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English blew, blewe, from Anglo-Norman blew, from Middle French bleu, from Old French blöe, bleve, blef (“blue”), from Frankish *blāu (“blue”) (perhaps through a Late Latin blāvus, blāvius (“blue”) attested from Isidore of Seville), from Proto-Germanic *blēwaz (“blue, dark blue”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰlēw- (“yellow, blond, grey”).
Cognate with dialectal English blow (“blue”), Scots blue, blew (“blue”), North Frisian bla, blö (“blue”), Saterland Frisian blau (“blue”), Dutch blauw (“blue”), German blau (“blue”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish blå (“blue”), Faroese bláur (“blue”), Icelandic blár (“blue”), Latin flāvus (“yellow”), French bleu (“blue”), Middle Irish blá (“yellow”). Doublet of blow.
Possibly related also to English blee (“colour”), from Old English blēo (“colour”); but direct derivatives of Proto-Germanic *blēwaz (“blue, dark blue”) in Old English include: Old English blāw and blēo (“blue”), Old English blǣwen (“bluish, light-blue”), blǣhǣwen (“blue-coloured, bluish, violet or purple colour”, literally “blue-hued”). There seems to be a parallel connection in Germanic between words for blue and colour, dually exemplified by Proto-West Germanic *blīu (“colour, blee”) and *blāu (“blue”); and Proto-Germanic *hiwją (“colour, hue”) and *hāwī (“blue, purple”).
(depressed): Compare typologically Russian тоска́ зелёная (toská zeljónaja) (<+ зелёный (zeljónyj)). Also compare фиоле́тово (fiolétovo).
Uncertain; possibly from blew, past tense of blow.
From the German surname, Americanized from Blau or its French cognate bleu.
Webster’s 1913
- adjective Having the color of the clear sky, or a hue resembling it, whether lighter or darker; as, the deep, blue sea; as blue as a sapphire; blue violets. "The blue firmament." Milton.
- adjective Pale, without redness or glare, --said of a flame; hence, of the color of burning brimstone, betokening the presence of ghosts or devils; as, the candle burns blue; the air was blue with oaths.
- noun One of the seven colors into which the rays of light divide themselves, when refracted through a glass prism; the color of the clear sky, or a color resembling that, whether lighter or darker; a pigment having such color. Sometimes, poetically, the sky.
- noun A pedantic woman; a bluestocking. [Colloq.]
Etymology [OE. bla, blo, blew, blue, Sw. bl, D. blauw, OHG. bl, G. blau; but influenced in form by F. bleu, from OHG. blao.]
Etymology [Short for blue devils.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “blue”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details