Blued

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /bluːd/

Definitions

1. An item has undergone a change to display a color similar to deep skies, reflecting a process that imparts a bluish quality
2. A surface possesses a hue akin to that of clear skies, resulting from an alteration that introduces a blue tint
3. Having acquired a shade of blue, often due to exposure or change ; subjected to a treatment that gives metal a protective blue-black finish

Etymology: Blue itself has a surprisingly murky past. Its ancestor, Proto-Germanic "blēwaz", meant something closer to "dark blue" and was related to words for yellow and grey, and the same root gave Latin "flāvus", meaning yellow. Over centuries the colour names of northern Europe shifted around each other, so a word that once sat near yellow ended up naming the sky's deep hue. English took the word in through Anglo-Norman and Middle French, and by Middle English it had become "blew" or "blewe". Old English had its own cousins, such as "blāw" and "blēo", which referred to colour in general as well as to blue. Blued, the past form of the verb, is simply blue turned into an action: to make something take on that colour. Its own history is plain, so the interest lies in how far the root has travelled.

Synonyms: tinged, colored, dyed, stained, painted