blue

• n. 蓝色；[复数]（美国海、陆、空三军穿的）蓝色制服；蓝颜料；[the blue(s)][用作单数或复数]布鲁斯（歌曲）（一种伤感的美国黑人民歌
• adj. 蓝色的；沮丧的，忧郁的；下流的
• vt. 把…染成蓝色；使成蓝色；给…用上蓝剂；用上蓝剂于
• vi. 变成蓝色，呈蓝色
• n. （英、西、意）布卢（人名）

词态变化

中文词源

来自PIE * bhel, 燃烧，发光。词源同blank, black. 在古英语里这一PIE词表示各种颜色。

英文词源

blue

blue: [13] Colour terms are notoriously slippery things, and blue is a prime example. Its ultimate ancestor, Indo-European *bhlēwos, seems originally to have meant ‘yellow’ (it is the source of Latin flāvus ‘yellow’, from which English gets flavine ‘yellow dye’ [19]). But it later evolved via ‘white’ (Greek phalós ‘white’ is related) and ‘pale’ to ‘livid, the colour of bruised skin’ (Old Norse has blá ‘livid’).

English had the related blāw, but it did not survive, and the modern English word was borrowed from Old French bleu. This was descended from a Common Romance *blāvus, which in turn was acquired from prehistoric Germanic *blǣwaz (source also of German blau ‘blue’).
=> flavine

blue (1)

c. 1300, bleu, blwe, etc., from Old French blo "pale, pallid, wan, light-colored; blond; discolored; blue, blue-gray," from Frankish *blao or some other Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *blæwaz (cognates: Old English blaw, Old Saxon and Old High German blao, Danish blaa, Swedish blå, Old Frisian blau, Middle Dutch bla, Dutch blauw, German blau "blue"), from PIE *bhle-was "light-colored, blue, blond, yellow," from PIE root bhel- (1) "to shine, flash" (see bleach (v.)).

The same PIE root yielded Latin flavus "yellow," Old Spanish blavo "yellowish-gray," Greek phalos "white," Welsh blawr "gray," Old Norse bla "livid" (the meaning in black and blue), showing the usual slippery definition of color words in Indo-European The present spelling is since 16c., from French influence (Modern French bleu).

The exact color to which the Gmc. term applies varies in the older dialects; M.H.G. bla is also 'yellow,' whereas the Scandinavian words may refer esp. to a deep, swarthy black, e.g. O.N. blamaðr, N.Icel. blamaður 'Negro' [Buck]

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Few words enter more largely into the composition of slang, and colloquialisms bordering on slang, than does the word BLUE. Expressive alike of the utmost contempt, as of all that men hold dearest and love best, its manifold combinations, in ever varying shades of meaning, greet the philologist at every turn. [John S. Farmer, "Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present," 1890, p.252]

The color of constancy since Chaucer at least, but apparently for no deeper reason than the rhyme in true blue (c. 1500). From early times blue was the distinctive color of the dress of servants, which may be the reason police uniforms are blue, a tradition Farmer dates to Elizabethan times. For blue ribbon see cordon bleu under cordon. Blue whale attested from 1851, so called for its color. The flower name blue bell is recorded by 1570s. Blue streak, of something resembling a bolt of lightning (for quickness, intensity, etc.) is from 1830, U.S. Western slang.

Many Indo-European languages seem to have had a word to describe the color of the sea, encompasing blue and green and gray; such as Irish glass (see Chloe); Old English hæwen "blue, gray," related to har (see hoar); Serbo-Croatian sinji "gray-blue, sea-green;" Lithuanian šyvas, Russian sivyj "gray."

blue (2)

"lewd, indecent" recorded from 1840 (in form blueness, in an essay of Carlyle's); the sense connection is unclear, and is opposite to that in blue laws (q.v.). John Mactaggart's "Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia" (1824) containing odd words he had learned while growing up in Galloway and elsewhere in Scotland, has an entry for Thread o'Blue, "any little smutty touch in song-singing, chatting, or piece of writing." Farmer ["Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present," 1890] offers the theory that this meaning derives from the blue dress uniforms issued to harlots in houses of correction, but he writes that the earlier slang authority John Camden Hotten "suggests it as coming from the French Bibliothèque Bleu, a series of books of very questionable character," and adds, from Hotten, that, "Books or conversation of an entirely opposite nature are said to be Brown or Quakerish, i.e., serious, grave, decent."

blue (v.)

"to make blue," c. 1600, from blue (1).

双语例句

1. She was a shy, delicately pretty girl with enormous blue eyes.

她是一个害羞、娇美的女孩，长着一双大大的蓝眼睛。

来自柯林斯例句

2. Queen Mary started the fashion for blue and white china in England.

玛丽女王开启了青花瓷在英格兰的流行风尚。

来自柯林斯例句

3. She stared dreamily out of the small window at the blue horizon.

她出神地看着小窗子外面的蓝色地平线。

来自柯林斯例句

4. They pried open a sticky can of blue paint.

他们撬开了一个黏糊糊的蓝色油漆桶。

来自柯林斯例句

5. He stared at me out of those washed-out blue eyes.

他用暗淡无神的蓝眼睛盯着我看。

来自柯林斯例句