Word.ws English Dictionary

blue devils

blue devils noun: low spirits; depression.

Noun

blue devils pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only, slang) Low spirits; depression.
    • ...ye who believe in the pernicious efforts of "Blue Devils," subscribe at once to that Paragon of Newspapers, "The Yankee Blade."1847, editorial staff, “The Yankee Blade”, in Scientific American, series 1, Volume 3, Issue 9, page 66
    • "[…] the disease is either extinct, or exists in such a mild form that a short course of aperient medicine carries it off. It is sometimes called the Blue-devils now or the Mulleygrubs. Queer names, ain't they?"1890, William Morris, News from Nowhere, in the journal The Commonweal. (First published in book form 1890.)
    Synonyms:
    mulligrubs
  2. (figuratively, plural, plural-only, slang) Depressants, especially the barbiturate amobarbital.

Synonyms of blue devils

Origin of blue devils

Originally apparitions supposed to be seen by sufferers of delirium tremens.

Questions about blue devils

What does blue devils mean?
Blue devils means low spirits; depression.
What part of speech is blue devils?
Blue devils is a noun.

Words near blue devils in the dictionary

  1. blue dashers
  2. blue daze
  3. blue dazes
  4. blue detuning
  5. blue devil
  6. blue devils
  7. Blue Diamond
  8. blue diamond impatiens
  9. blue diaper syndrome
  10. blue discharge
  11. blue discharges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue devils (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-blue devils.ogg.

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