blue

• n. 青; [複数形](米海軍、陸軍、空軍が着用する)青い制服; 青いペンキ; [the blue(s)][単数形または複数形として使用される]ブルース(歌)(感傷的なアメリカ黒人民謡)
• adj.青い; 憂鬱な; 意地悪な
• vt...を青く染める；青くする；...にブルーイング剤を与える；...にブルーイング剤を使う
• vi. 青くなる、青く見える
• n. （英語、スペイン語、イタリア語）blu.

PIE * bhel（燃やす、輝く）から。語源はblank、blackと同じ。 古英語ではこのPIE語は様々な色を表す。

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 *bl?waz (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 *bl?waz (cognates: Old English blaw, Old Saxon and Old High German blao, Danish blaa, Swedish bl?, 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. blamaer, N.Icel. blamaeur '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 h?wen "blue, gray," related to har (see hoar); Serbo-Croatian sinji "gray-blue, sea-green;" Lithuanian ?yvas, 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).

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

彼女はシャイで美しい女の子で、大きな青い目をしています。

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

メアリー女王はイングランドでの青花磁器の流行を開いた。

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

彼女は小さな窓の外の青い地平線をうっとりと見ていた。

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

彼らはべたべたした青いペンキバケツをこじ開けた。

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

彼は暗く無神な青い目で私を見つめていた。