feel blue
Meaning: To feel sad or low.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “Rainy Sundays always make me feel blue.”
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Blue has stood for sadness in English since at least the late 1300s — Chaucer's Complaint of Mars (c. 1385) already has "teres blewe" for a wounded heart's tears — and "blue devil," a demon of gloom and despair, is on record from the 1600s, well before "the blues" itself appears in the 1740s. Why blue specifically became the color of melancholy is genuinely unsettled: one theory points to the bluish tinge of lifeless skin and lips; another reaches back to Greek mythology's association between rain, storm, and Zeus's own sorrow, tying the color to bad weather generally; a third, more specific claim holds that ships once flew a blue flag or painted a blue band along the hull when a captain or officer died at sea, giving "feeling blue" a very literal source in mourning at sea. None of the three is confirmed over the others.
More idioms — Daily Life
- blue ribbon — First-rate or renowned; also, a first prize.
- boiling point — The point at which one loses one's temper.
- born yesterday — Naive.
- the bottom line — The net result; the essential point or undeniable truth.
- bottom of the barrel — The least able member of a group; the least desirable items from a collection.
- box someone in — To trap someone, physically or in a situation, leaving no room to maneuver.
More English idioms
- bottoms up! — A call to drink; to empty one's glass.
- bring the house down — To be a great success.
- give someone the brush-off — To be dismissed casually and almost cruelly.
- give someone a bum steer — To give someone bad advice or wrong directions.
- burn rubber — To accelerate with tires so quickly from a stopped position that the rubber tires make a…
- burn the candle at both ends — To overwork oneself.