Bluest

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having the deepest, most vivid shade of the color of a clear sky or the open sea ; feeling the most sad, gloomy, or downhearted of all
2. Displaying the richest and most saturated tone of blue among those compared ; expressing the greatest degree of sorrow or low spirits
3. The most vividly azure in hue of several things ; the most despondent or forlorn in mood of a group

Etymology: "Bluest" is simply the superlative of "blue", formed by adding the ending "-est" to the adjective. The more interesting history lies in the base word. "Blue" came into Middle English as "blew" or "blewe", borrowed through Anglo-Norman and Middle French from the Old French "bleu", which descended from a Frankish word "blāu" meaning the same colour. That Frankish word traces back to a Proto-Germanic root, "blēwaz", which sat alongside meanings such as "dark blue" and possibly "yellow" or "grey" in its ancient Indo-European ancestor. The surprise is how often "blue" was not the colour people reached for first. Old English had its own words for the colour, such as "blāw" and "blēo", and "blee" survived for a time as a word for hue or colour itself. The Germanic languages show a close link between words for blue and words for colour in general, suggesting that the two ideas were closely entangled long before English settled on the modern term.

Synonyms: azure, cerulean

Antonyms: yellow