blue
Meanings
- Of a blue hue.
- Depressed, melancholic, sad.
- Having a bluish or purplish shade to the skin due to a lack of oxygen to the normally deep-red red blood cells; cyanotic.
- Pale, without redness or glare.
- Supportive of, run by (a member of), pertaining to, or dominated by a political party represented by the colour blue.
- Supportive of, run by (a member of), pertaining to, or dominated by the Democratic Party.
- Supportive of or related to the Liberal Party.
- Supportive of or related to the Conservative Party.
- Of, dominated by, or shifted toward the higher-frequency, or "bluer", end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- Having a colour charge of blue.
- Extra rare; left very raw and cold.
- Having a coat of fur of a slaty gray shade.
- 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.
- Anything coloured blue, especially to distinguish it from similar objects differing only in colour.
- A blue dye or pigment.
- Blue clothing.
- A blue uniform. See blues.
- A member of a sports team that wears blue colours; (in the plural) a nickname for the team as a whole. See also blues.
- 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.
- 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.
- A person who has received such sporting colours.
- A member of law enforcement.
- A bluestocking.
- The sky, literally or figuratively.
- To make or become blue; to turn blue.
- To treat the surface of steel so that it is passivated chemically and becomes more resistant to rust.
- To brighten by treating with blue (laundry aid).
- To fight, brawl, or argue.
- To spend (money) extravagantly; to blow.
- A surname from German. An anglicization of German Blau.
- A female given name from English, typically used in conjoined names like Bonnie Blue or Blue Bell.
- A male nickname, occasionally used as a formal given name. (Australia) Nickname for a person with ginger hair.
- A letterman at Oxford or Cambridge.
- A member of the Royal Horse Guards (which merged with the 1st Dragoons in 1969)
- Synonym of British Blue (“a breed of cat”).
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English blewe, from Anglo-Norman blew (“blue”), 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).