Etymology: < Anglo-Norman blew, bliu, blu, blwe, bluw, Anglo-Norman and Middle French bleu livid, pale, leaden, bruised (c1121 in Old French), of the colour of the sky on a clear day (c1150), coloured blue as signifying loyalty, fidelity, or constancy (first half of 15th cent.), (as noun) the colour of the sky on a clear day (a1200), cloth coloured blue (1254), blue as signifying loyalty, fidelity, or constancy (14th cent.) < a form in a Germanic language cognate with blae adj. Compare Old Occitan blau, bleu, also ( < French or Occitan) Italian †biavo (15th cent.). Compare also post-classical Latin blavus (a636 in Isidore), blaveus, blavius (from 7th cent. in British and continental sources), also blodius (from 14th cent. in British sources), all chiefly in the meaning ‘blue’; also (as noun) post-classical Latin blavius, blevius, bludus, blutus (masculine) blue cloth (13th cent. in British sources), blodeus, blodius (masculine) blue cloth or colour (from 14th cent. in British sources), blavium (neuter) cornflower (1538 in a British source). It is possible that a different word (perhaps of Celtic origin) is reflected by Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French bloi fair, golden, light, blonde, pale, also (in Anglo-Norman and probably also in Old French) blue, although if so there would appear to have been some merger, at least in Anglo-Norman (in which further senses, attested for various spellings, include ‘blue-grey’, ‘tawny’, ‘dark’, ‘ashen, grey’).Semantic history. The use (in French and English) in sense A. 6 is of uncertain origin; perhaps with allusion to the constancy and permanence of the blue of the sky, or to the fastness or intense staining power of a particular blue dye. Compare later true blue adj. Sense A. 4 probably originally shows a development from sense A. 2; in its later development there has probably been mutual influence between this sense and both blue devil n. and blues n. The origin of sense A. 10 is uncertain. Quot. 1818 at sense A. 10a suggests a connection with the blue flame of burning brimstone (as characteristic of hell), but it is not entirely certain that this quot. shows continuity with the later use. Perhaps compare blue gown n. 1(a), although this appears to have been current only in a rather earlier period. A suggested connection with French bibliothèque bleue , denoting literature in a blue paper cover sold by itinerant sellers from the 17th to the 19th centuries and read by the lower social classes, seems unlikely, since such material appears in general to have been highly moral in tone. Pronunciation history. The pronunciation for a long time varied between /bljuː/ (showing the expected eventual development of French /y/ in a word borrowed in Middle English) and /bluː/ (showing loss of /j/ after /l/); compare the general discussion at U n.¹ It is clear that at various times the selection of one variant or the other was socially marked, /bljuː/ generally being the more prestigious form (compare comment from the late 18th cent. cited in C. Jones Eng. Pronunc. in 18th & 19th Centuries (2006) 213). The pronunciation /bljuː/ persists late in dictionaries, but this is probably in part a result of conservatism; N.E.D. (1887) noted: ‘Nearly all the dictionaries still recognize (blⁱū) [ /bljuː/], but the more easily pronounced (blū) [ /bluː/] is general in educated speech.’ Cognate forms in Old English. Based on the evidence of the Germanic cognates (see blae adj. and n.), the expected form of the Old English word from this Germanic base would be *blāw , but this is not securely attested (for possible place-name evidence see below). The following early gloss transmitted in a continental manuscript has sometimes been taken as showing the word (used as noun) as second element in a compound (with haui haw adj. as first element), rendering post-classical Latin blatta purple colour, purple dye; but this would require the gloss to show a dative plural form for which there is no obvious explanation, and it is perhaps more likely that the gloss actually shows post-classical Latin blavum (use as noun of blavus ) or has been otherwise altered by a continental scribe (compare also Old High German blau- ):eOE Erfurt Gloss. in W. M. Lindsay Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt & Leyden Glossaries (1921) 82 Blata, pigmentum, hauiblauum [perh. read haui, blauum].An Old English form blǣ (perhaps for *blǣw ), presumably a by-form of *blāw with i-mutation, is attested as the first element of the adjective blǣhǣwen blue (for the second element see haw adj.), although it is not securely attested as a simplex. The following apparent attestation (in uncertain sense, perhaps to be taken as ‘bluish’) is more likely to show an abbreviated form of blǣhǣwen or blǣwen (see below):OE Aldhelm Glosses (Corpus Cambr. 326) in H. D. Meritt Old Eng. Glosses (1945) 1/1 Glauco : blæ [OE Brussels 1650 blæhæwenre].The adjective blǣwen blue, is either a reduced form of blǣhǣwen or independently derived from the same base as its first element by means of -en suffix⁴. The exact range of meaning of these more securely attested adjectives is also not entirely certain, as they are used to render a number of different Latin colour terms and tend to occur in ambiguous or problematic contexts. The words are rare compared to the semantically comparable haw adj. and its derivative hǣwen , and it is possible that they were chiefly associated with textiles and with the colour of woad used as a dye (for a detailed discussion see C. P. Biggam Blue in Old Eng. (1997) 91–104, 223–40); compare:OE Will of Æðelgifu (Sawyer 1497) in D. Whitelock Will of Æthelgifu (1968) 13 Selle mon Beornwynne minne blæwenan cyrtel.OE Antwerp-London Gloss. (2011) 102 Perseus, blæwen.OE Old Eng. Hexateuch: Lev. (Claud.) viii. 7 Scrydde ðone bisceop mid linenum reafe..& dyde ymbe hine blæhæwene tunecan [L. tunica hyacinthina].The existence of Old English *blāw is perhaps implied by place-name evidence, e.g. Blauuefelda , Blafelda , Norfolk (1086; now Blofield), Blowedoune , Devon (1270; now Blowden), and the field name Blouhulle , Winchcombe, Gloucestershire (12th cent.), although as a place-name element the word is difficult to distinguish from the cognate Scandinavian loan blae adj. and also from blow v.¹ It has been suggested that as a place-name element the word perhaps refers to places associated with woad, or alternatively that it may perhaps refer to windy, exposed locations, or to the colour of an adjoining river or stream. The borrowing of blue. It is noteworthy that none of the native Old English words for ‘blue’ cited above (of which the commonest appears to have been hǣwen ) survives beyond the Old English period as the usual term for the colour, and that blue adj. is a borrowing; for a discussion of possible reasons for this see C. P. Biggam ‘Political upheaval and a disturbance in the colour vocabulary of early English’ in C. P. Biggam & C. J. Kay Progress in Colour Studies (2006) I. 159–79. Possible evidence for earlier currency in English. It is unclear whether the following early attestations of a vernacular word in a Latin context in sense ‘blue cloth’ (compare sense B. 2) should be taken as showing the Middle English or the Anglo-Norman word (they would represent antedatings in either case, respectively of the word and of the sense):1205 in T. D. Hardy Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum (1833) I. 25 Mittimus ad vos..i supertunicam de blou & bisso.1220 in M. T. Löfvenberg Contrib. Middle Eng. Lexicogr. & Etymol. (1946) 31 Unum pallium de blu. Use in names. The word is probably attested earlier in the name of a ship Blewebolle (?1278). Compare also early use in the surname of William Bluhod (1310).