Word.ws English Dictionary

blue-red

blue-red adjective: of a colour between blue and red; purple or crimson.

Adjective

blue-red (comparative more blue-red, superlative most blue-red)

  1. Of a colour between blue and red; purple or crimson.
    • This unquiet feeling increases as the hue progresses, and it may be safely assumed, that a carpet of a perfectly pure deep blue-red [translating Blaurot] would be intolerable.1840, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's Theory of Colours
    • A dye-stuff which dyes wool and silk in acid-bath in fine red-violet tints, dissolves in water with a blue-red color and a yellowish fluorescence, is sparingly soluble in alcohol, insoluble in ether and benzene, […]1898, The Year-book for Colorists and Dyers, page 85
  2. Consisting of the colours blue and red individually.
    • a blue-red cock (rooster)

Noun

blue-red (countable and uncountable, plural blue-reds)

  1. A colour between blue and red; purple or crimson.
    • Let us suppose a red represented by the equivalent number, five, with one part of blue added to it, thus causing it to be a blue-red or crimson.1981, The Technical Educator, an Encyclopædia
    • A blue-red monochromatic color plan includes any hues created when blue-red is combined with white, black, and/or gray.2014, Joen Wolfrom, Color Play, page 104

Examples of blue-red in a sentence

  • Amyl alcohol extracts a blue-red color from material dyed with magenta, but extracts a yellow color from aurin, while from orchil a pink or violet color is obtained.1908, Samuel Philip Sadtler, A Hand-book of Industrial Organic Chemistry:
  • (V), C₁₄H₉O₃NBr₂, dark crystals with cantharides luster, blackens above 230°, does not m. 310°, sol. in NaOH with blue-red color and very faint fluorescence.1925, Chemical Abstracts, volume 19, page 2649:
  • Standing and moving to under one of the lights by the nav station I could see a dark blue-red mark across the right side of my rib cage.2013, Crispin Latymer, Where the Ocean Meets the Sky, page 48:
  • When hemoglobin is unoxygenated, blood assumes a darker blue-red color.2014, Barbara L. Herlihy, The Human Body in Health and Illness, page 289:

Forms of blue-red

Adjective
comparativemore blue-red
superlativemost blue-red
Noun
pluralblue-reds

Origin of blue-red

From blue + red. Compare Old English blēorēad (“blue-red, purple”).

Questions about blue-red

What does blue-red mean?
Blue-red means of a colour between blue and red; purple or crimson.
How do you use blue-red in a sentence?
Amyl alcohol extracts a blue-red color from material dyed with magenta, but extracts a yellow color from aurin, while from orchil a pink or violet color is obtained.
What part of speech is blue-red?
Blue-red can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near blue-red in the dictionary

  1. blue-plate
  2. blue-plate special
  3. blue-plate specials
  4. blue-print
  5. blue-prints
  6. blue-red
  7. blue-ribbon
  8. blue-ringed octopi
  9. blue-ringed octopii
  10. blue-ringed octopodes
  11. blue-ringed octopus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue-red (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “blue-red.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blue-red. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.