different between zaffre vs blue

English

Alternative forms

• zaffer
• zaffree
• zaffar
• zaffir

Etymology

From Italian zaffera, from Latin sapphirus (“sapphire”). Doublet of sapphire.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?zæf?(?)/
• Rhymes: -æf?(?)

Noun

zaffre (countable and uncountable, plural zaffres)

1. A blue pigment obtained by roasting cobalt ore.
2. A cobalt blue colour, like that of the pigment.

Translations

See also

• (blues) blue; Alice blue, aqua, aquamarine, azure, baby blue, beryl, bice, bice blue, blue green, blue violet, blueberry, cadet blue, Cambridge blue, cerulean, cobalt blue, Copenhagen blue, cornflower, cornflower blue, cyan, dark blue, Dodger blue, duck-egg blue, eggshell blue, electric-blue, gentian blue, ice blue, lapis lazuli, light blue, lovat, mazarine, midnight blue, navy, Nile blue, Oxford blue, peacock blue, petrol blue, powder blue, Prussian blue, robin's-egg blue, royal blue, sapphire, saxe blue, slate blue, sky blue, teal, turquoise, ultramarine, Wedgwood blue, zaffre ^{(Category: en:Blues)}

Anagrams

• affzer, zaffer

English

Alternative forms

• blew, blewe (obsolete)

Pronunciation

• enPR: blo?o, IPA^(key): /blu?/
• (Wales) IPA^(key): /bl???/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /blu/
• (obsolete) enPR: blyo?o, IPA^(key): /blju?/
• Rhymes: -u?
• Homophone: blew

Etymology 1

From Middle English blewe, from Anglo-Norman blew (“blue”), from Frankish *bl?u (“blue”) (perhaps through a Medieval Latin bl?vus, bl?vius (“blue”)), from Proto-Germanic *bl?waz (“blue, dark blue”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?l?w- (“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 and Swedish blå (“blue”), Icelandic blár (“blue”), Latin fl?vus (“yellow”), Middle Irish blá (“yellow”). Doublet of blae.

The sense "obscene, pornographic" is apparently from the colour; various theories exist as to how it arose, including that it is from the colour of the envelopes used to contain missives of the censors and managers to vaudevillian performers on objectionable material from their acts that needed to be excised. (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

Adjective

blue (comparative bluer or more blue, superlative bluest or most blue)

1. Having blue as its color.

2. (informal) Depressed, melancholic, sad.

   • “Heavens!” exclaimed Nina, “the blue-stocking and the fogy!—and yours are pale blue, Eileen!—you’re about as self-conscious as Drina—slumping there with your hair tumbling à la Mérode! Oh, it's very picturesque, of course, but a straight spine and good grooming is better. […]”

   • 1904, Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Transgression of Andrew Vane, Henry Holt and Company, page 140:

     "Will you play some of the 'Garden' now?" she asked. "I think I should like it. I'm just the least bit blue."

   • 1978, Michael Johnson, "Bluer Than Blue"

     But I'm bluer than blue / Sadder than sad.

3. (health care) Having a bluish or purplish shade of the skin due to a lack of oxygen to the normally deep red blood cells.

4. Pale, without redness or glare; said of a flame.

5. (politics) Supportive of, run by (a member of), pertaining to, or dominated by a political party represented by the colour blue.
   1. (US, politics) Supportive of, run by (a member of), pertaining to, or dominated by the Democratic Party. [late 20th c.]

   2. (Australia, politics) Supportive of or related to the Liberal Party.

   3. (Britain, politics) Supportive of or related to the Conservative Party.
6. (astronomy) Of the higher-frequency region of the part of the electromagnetic spectrum which is relevant in the specific observation.
7. (of steak) Extra rare; left very raw and cold.
8. (of a dog or cat) Having a coat of fur of a slaty gray shade.
9. (archaic) Severe or overly strict in morals; gloomy.

10. (archaic, of women) literary; bluestockinged.
11. (particle physics) Having a color charge of blue.
12. (informal) Risqué; obscene; profane; pornographic.

Synonyms

• (color): azure
• (pornographic): adult, X-rated; see also Thesaurus:pornographic

Antonyms

• (having blue as its colour): nonblue, unblue
• (having blue as its colour charge): antiblue

Descendants

• Tok Pisin: blu
• ? Fiji Hindi: bulu
• ? Shona: bhuluu
• ? Somali: buluug
• ? Swahili: bluu, buluu

Translations

Noun

blue (countable and uncountable, plural blues)

1. (countable and uncountable) The colour of the clear sky or the deep sea, between green and violet in the visible spectrum, and one of the primary additive colours for transmitted light; the colour obtained by subtracting red and green from white light using magenta and cyan filters; or any colour resembling this.
2. Anything coloured blue, especially to distinguish it from similar objects differing only in color.

   I don't like red Smarties. Have you got a blue?

3. A blue dye or pigment.
4. Blue clothing.

   The boys in blue marched to the pipers.

   1. (in the plural) A blue uniform. See blues.
   2. A member of a sports team that wears blue colours; (in the plural) a nickname for the team as a whole. See also blues.

      Come on you blues!

   3. 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.

      He excelled at rowing and received a blue in the sport at Oxford.

   4. A person who has received such sporting colours.

      He was a blue in rugby at Cambridge.

   5. (slang) A member of law enforcement.
   6. (now historical) A bluestocking.
5. The sky, literally or figuratively.

   The balloon floated up into the blue.

   His request for leave came out of the blue.

6. The ocean; deep waters.
7. The far distance; a remote or distant place.
   • 1978, Peter Hathaway Capstick, Death in the Long Grass (?ISBN):

     The problem with buffalo as well as most African antelopes as a steady diet is that they have very little marbling or body fat and, after six months out in the blue, one dreams at night of a T-bone steak sizzling in great globules of yellow fat.

   • 2000, Thomas C. Barger, Timothy J. Barger, Out in the Blue: Letters from Arabia, 1937 to 1940 : a Young American Geologist Explores the Deserts of Early Saudi Arabia (?ISBN)
8. A dog or cat with a slaty gray coat.
9. (snooker) One of the colour balls used in snooker, with a value of five points.
11. (entomology) Any of the butterflies of the subfamily Polyommatinae in the family Lycaenidae, most of which have blue on their wings.
12. A bluefish.
13. (Australia, colloquial) An argument.
    • 2008, Cheryl Jorgensen, The Taint, page 135,

      If they had a blue between themselves, they kept it there, it never flowed out onto the streets to innocent people — like a lot of things that have been happenin? on the streets today.

    • 2009, John Gilfoyle, Remember Cannon Hill, page 102,

      On another occasion, there was a blue between Henry Daniels and Merv Wilson down at the pig sale. I don?t know what it was about, it only lasted a minute or so, but they shook hands when it was over and that was the end of it.

    • 2011, Julietta Jameson, Me, Myself and Lord Byron, unnumbered page,

      I was a bit disappointed. Was that it? No abuse like Lord Byron had endured? Not that I was wishing that upon myself. It was just that a blue between my parents, albeit a raging, foul, bile-spitting hate fest, was not exactly Charles Dickens.

14. A liquid with an intense blue colour, added to a laundry wash to prevent yellowing of white clothes.
15. Any of several processes to protect metal against rust.
16. (Britain) A type of firecracker.
    • 1781, Frances Burney, Journals & Letters, Penguin 2001, p. 172:

      Lord Lyttelton's Life by Dr Johnson […] which a whole tribe of Blues, with Mrs Montagu at their Head, have Vowed to execrate and revenge […].

17. (particle physics) One of the three color charges for quarks.
18. (Britain) A member or supporter of the Conservative Party.

    He is a true blue.

Translations

Further reading

• Blue (colour) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

blue (third-person singular simple present blues, present participle blueing or bluing, simple past and past participle blued)

1. (ergative) To make or become blue.
2. (transitive, metallurgy) To treat the surface of steel so that it is passivated chemically and becomes more resistant to rust.
3. (transitive, laundry) To brighten by treating with blue (laundry aid)

Translations

Derived terms

See also

• (blues) blue; Alice blue, aqua, aquamarine, azure, baby blue, beryl, bice, bice blue, blue green, blue violet, blueberry, cadet blue, Cambridge blue, cerulean, cobalt blue, Copenhagen blue, cornflower, cornflower blue, cyan, dark blue, Dodger blue, duck-egg blue, eggshell blue, electric-blue, gentian blue, ice blue, lapis lazuli, light blue, lovat, mazarine, midnight blue, navy, Nile blue, Oxford blue, peacock blue, petrol blue, powder blue, Prussian blue, robin's-egg blue, royal blue, sapphire, saxe blue, slate blue, sky blue, teal, turquoise, ultramarine, Wedgwood blue, zaffre ^{(Category: en:Blues)}
• bluing (steel) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Havasupai
• primary colour
• rainbow
• RGB

Etymology 2

Etymology uncertain; possibly from blew (past tense of blow).

Verb

blue (third-person singular simple present blues, present participle blueing or bluing, simple past and past participle blued)

1. (transitive, slang, dated) To spend (money) extravagantly; to blow.
   • 1974, GB Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, New York 2007, page 311:

     They was willing to blue the lot and have nothing left when they got home except debts on the never-never.

References

Anagrams

• Buel, lube

Esperanto

Adverb

blue

1. bluely

Related terms

• blua (“blue”)
• blui (“to be blue”)
• bluo (“the color blue”)