Blue

How to spell blue

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce blue

What does blue mean?

1. adjectiveHaving the colour of a clear sky or the deep sea.
2. nounThe colour of a clear sky, as a thing in its own right.
3. adjectiveFeeling low in spirits or mildly depressed.

Blue in a sentence

• adjective

  She painted the bedroom walls a soft blue shade.

• noun

  The designer mixed a richer blue for the company logo.

• adjective

  She felt a little blue after the holidays ended.

• adjective

  The new blue uniforms arrived from the supplier this morning.

• noun

  Deep blue is her favourite colour for curtains.

• adjective

  Long winter evenings always leave him feeling blue.

Where does blue come from?

Language of origin: French

Blue arrived in English from the Old French word bleu, meaning the colour of a clear sky, which the French had themselves taken from a Frankish word blao that belonged to the wider Germanic family. The deeper Germanic root described something shining or pale, and surprisingly the same ancient root also gave rise to words for shimmering and even to the word for a flame's pale heart. The Old French spelling with its quiet -eu ending is exactly why English settled on the unexpected -ue rather than a plainer spelling, and that quiet vowel cluster is the trap for writers today. The word pushed out the older native English term for the colour during the 1200s and 1300s as French vocabulary flooded in after the Norman Conquest. By the time it was fully naturalised, blue also picked up the figurative sense of low spirits, a meaning the language has kept ever since. Its near-twin in sound, blew, is the past tense of blow and comes from an entirely separate native root, which is why the two are forever confused on the page.

How the word is built

• blue (single root from Old French bleu, of Germanic origin); no prefix or suffix