To feel sad, often (though not always) for romantic/sexual reasons. I think the romantic link came about because blue rhymes with lots of useful words for popular songwriters (you, too, two, through...).I would like to know what does this idiom mean. To feel blue. Thank you. MZ
(Online Etymology Dictionary)meaning "depression, low spirits" goes back to 1741, from adj. blue "low-spirited," c.1385.
BLUE. Gloomy, severe; extreme, ultra.
In the former sense it is applied especially to the Presbyterians, to denote their severe and mortified appearance. Thus, beneath an old portrait of the seventeenth century, in the Woodburn Gallery, is the following inscription:
A true blue Priest, a Lincey Woolsey Brother,
One legg a pulpit, holds a tub the other;
An Orthodox grave, moderate Presbyterian,
Half surplice cloake, half Priest, half Puritan.
Made up of all these halfes, hee cannot pass
For anything entirely but an ass.
In the latter sense it is used particularly in politics.
The bluest description of old Van Rensselaer Federalists have followed Col. Prentiss (in Otsego county).--N. Y. Tribune.
The phrase the blues is a reference to having a fit of the blue devils, meaning 'down' spirits, depression and sadness. An early reference to "the blues" can be found in George Colman's farce Blue devils, a farce in one act (1798).
Apparently, the adjective is much older than the songs blues singers sing...
Referring to that N.Y. Tribune piece, is it just in BE that 'true blue' often means '[politically] conservative'?
b
"In the latter sense it is used particularly in politics."