Blue

For other uses, see the colour.

Blue
Common connotations
ice, water, sky, cold, technology, and sadness
Colour coordinates
Hex triplet	#0000FF
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(0, 0, 255)
HSV (h, s, v)	(240°, 100%, 100%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(32, 131, 266°)
Source	HTML/CSS
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal mixture of red and green light. On a colour wheel based on traditional colour theory (RYB), the complementary colour to blue is considered to be orange (based on the Munsell colour wheel).

The English language commonly uses "blue" to refer to any colour from navy blue to cyan. The word itself is derived from the Old French word bleu.

Blue in the RGB system

In the RGB colur system, colours are formed by mixing a red, a green and a blue color. When talking about RGB, therefore, some people use blue to mean that specific blue, which varies in shade according to the device used to display the RGB color. Absolute colour spaces based on RGB, such as sRGB, define an exact color for this blue, which may differ from the actual blue used in a particular computer monitor.

Etymology and definitions

The modern English word blue (German:blau) comes from the Middle English, bleu or blwe, which came from an Old French word bleu of Germanic origin (Frankish or possibly Old High German blao, "shining"). Bleu replaced Old English blaw. The root of these variations was the Proto-Germanic blæwaz, which was also the root of the Old Norse word bla and the modern Icelandic blár, and the Scandinavian word blå, but it can refer to other colours. A Scots and Scottish English word for "blue-grey" is blae, from the Middle English bla ("dark blue," from the Old English blæd). Ancient Greek lacked a word for colour blue and Homer called the colour of the sea "wine dark", except that the word kyanos was used for dark blue enamel.

As a curiosity, blue is thought to be cognate with blond and black through the Germanic word. Through a Proto-Indo-European root, it is also linked with Latin flavus ("yellow"; see flavescent and flavine), with Greek phalos (white), French blanc (white) (loaned from Old Frankish), and with Russian белый, belyi ("white," see beluga), and Welsh blawr (grey) all of which derive (according to the American Heritage Dictionary) from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhel- meaning "to shine, flash or burn", (more specifically the word bhle-was, which meant light coloured, blue, blond, or yellow), from whence came the names of various bright colours, and that of colour black from a derivation meaning "burnt" (other words derived from the root bhel- include bleach, bleak, blind, blink, blank, blush, blaze, flame, fulminate, flagrant and phlegm).

In the English language, blue may refer to the feeling of sadness. "He was feeling blue". This is because blue was related to rain, or storms, and in Greek mythology, the god Zeus would make rain when he was sad (crying), and a storm when he was angry. Kyanos was a name used in Ancient Greek to refer to dark blue tile (in English it means blue-green).

Many languages do not have separate terms for blue and or green, instead using a cover term for both (when the issue is discussed in linguistics, this cover term is sometimes called grue in English).

In science

Pigments

Traditionally, blue has been considered a primary colour in painting, with the secondary colour orange as its complement.

Blue pigments include azurite, ultramarine, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and Prussian blue (milori blue).

Scientific natural standards for blue

• Emission spectrum of Cu²⁺
• Electronic spectrum of aqua-ions Cu(H₂O)₅²⁺

Animals

• When an animal's coat is described as "blue", it refers to a shade of grey that takes on a bluish tint, a diluted variant of a pure black coat. This designation is used for a variety of animals, including dog coats, some rat coats, cat coats, some chicken breeds, and some horse coat colours.

Blue in human culture

Psychology

• Blue often represents the human emotion of sadness, e.g. "He was feeling blue".

Music

• The blues is a style of music originated by African Americans. Contrary to popular belief it is not called Blues because its lyrics are depressing but because its scale is inclusive of the "dark notes" or blue notes.

• In 1999 Eiffel 65 released the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)," a hugely popular techno song which peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, and reached #1 in 17 countries.

National colours

• Blue and white are the national colours of Finland, Greece, Israel, and the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

• Blue and yellow are the national colours of Sweden, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Barbados, and along with green, of Brazil, and along with red, of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chad, Romania, and Moldova.

• Red and blue are the national colours of Romania, Liechtenstein and Haiti, and along with white, The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, Norway, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Serbia, Croatia, Paraguay, Iceland, Panama, Russia, Cuba, Chile, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Liberia, Nepal, Slovenia, South Korea.

• Azzurro, a light blue, is the national colour of Italy (from the livery colour of the former reigning family, the House of Savoy).

• Blue is the national sports colour for India, as it denotes secularism.

Mysticism

• Psychics who claim to be able to observe the aura with their third eye report that someone with a blue aura is a person who is oriented toward spirituality. People with blue auras are said to be in interested in social service work and to be in occupations such as social worker, counselor, teacher, writer, and psychologist.

Politics

Main article: Political colour

• Blue has been associated with a variety of political positions, often differentiated from communist red or anarchist black. During the revolt in the Vendée against the French revolution, blues stood for the revolutionary forces, and white for the counter-revolutionaries. Later movements like the Breton blues used the colour to signify allegiance to the ideals of the revolution.

• In the United Kingdom blue is the colour of the Conservative Party. In the United States, however, it has become fashionable since the 2000 Presidential Election to refer to the Democratic Party as "blue" and the Republican Party as "red", particularly as in reference to "red states and blue states".

• The Blue Dog Democrats are a group of conservative Democrats in the United States House of Representatives.

Religion

• Blue in Judaism: In the Torah, the Israelites were commanded to put fringes, tzitzit, on the corners of their garments, and to weave within these fringes a "twisted thread of blue (tekhelet)". In ancient days, this blue thread was made from a dye extracted from a Mediterranean snail called the hilazon. Maimonides claimed that this blue was the colour of “the clear noonday sky”; Rashi, the colour of the evening sky. According to several rabbinic sages, blue is the colour of God’s Glory. Staring at this colour aids in mediation, bringing us a glimpse of the “pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity”, which is a likeness of the Throne of God. (The Hebrew word for glory. Many items in the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, such as the menorah, many of the vessels, and the Ark of the Covenant, were covered with blue cloth when transported from place to place.

Symbolism

• In Thailand, Blue is associated with Friday on the Thai solar calendar. Anyone may wear blue on Fridays and anyone born on a Friday may adopt blue as their colour. The Thai language, however, is one that has had trouble distinguishing blue from green. The default word for Blue was recently สีน้ำเงิน literally, the colour of silver, a poetical reference to the silvery sheen of the deep blue sea. It now means Navy Blue, and the default word is now สีฟ้า literally, the colour of the sky.

Languages

• English:'blue' French:'bleu' German: 'blau' Chinese:'蓝 lan' Russian:'голубо'Italian:'blu' Korean:'파란'

See also

• Blue flag
• Blue movie
• Turquoise
• Distinguishing "blue" from "green" in language
• Engineer's blue
• Lapis lazuli, a blue stone
• List of colours
• Three Colors: Blue, a movie
• Blue ribbon
• St. Patrick's Blue

External links

• All About the Colour Blue