Word.ws English Dictionary

blues

/bluːz/

blues is the plural of blue.

blues is the third-person singular simple present indicative of blue.

Noun

blues (countable and uncountable, plural blues)

  1. (informal, plural-normally) A feeling of sadness or depression.
    • I've got the blues today.
    • The blues have hit her hard, and she won't get out of bed.
    1. (in plural, informal, plural-normally, singular) One's particular life experience, particularly including the hardships one has faced.
      • Your blues is just like mine.
      • Your blues are just like mine.
    2. (in plural, informal, plural-normally, singular) The negative emotional state produced by a particular action, occupation, experience, or idea.
      • I've got the lonely man's blues.
      • If you work here long enough, you'll have the butcher's blues just like me.
  2. A musical form, of African-American origin, generally featuring an eight-bar or twelve-bar blues structure and using the blues scale.
    • Many great blues musicians came from the Mississippi Delta region.
    • A large portion of modern popular music is influenced by the blues.
    1. (singular) A musical composition following blues forms.
      • My next number is a blues in G.
  3. A uniform made principally of a blue fabric, and especially a full dress uniform thus colored.
    • They marched in their dress blues.
    • You never planned on the bombs in the sand
      Or sleeping in your dress blues.2007, Jason Isbell, Dress Blues
  4. (slang) Any of various blue pills sold on the street, mimicking the appearance of prescription painkiller tablets.

Meaning of blue

Noun

blue (countable and uncountable, plural blues)

  1. The colour of the clear sky or the deep sea; the colour midway between green and violet in the visible spectrum and one of the primary additive colours.
    • Lady Penrhyn was quite handsome enough to have spared one ingredient in her cup of fascination, but, unfortunately, having been married in her teens, she expected to live in them, and, never being reminded by the trials to which her sex is subject, of the flight of years, and the inroads of...1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 204
  2. Anything coloured blue, especially to distinguish it from similar objects differing only in colour.
    • I don't like red Smarties. Have you got a blue?
  3. A blue dye or pigment.
  4. (uncountable) Blue clothing.
    • The boys in blue marched to the pipers.
    1. (in plural) A blue uniform. See blues.
    2. A member of a sports team that wears blue colours; (in the plural) a nickname for the team as a whole. See also blues.
      • Come on, you blues!

See all 52 meanings of blue

Proper noun capitalized: Blues

Blues

  1. (historical, informal) The chariot-racing faction of the Roman circus and Constantinopolitan hippodrome that wore blue.
    • 'Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues of ancient Rome,' wrote Edward Gibbon, 'and the same factions which had agitated the circus raged with redoubled fury in the Hippodrome.' Gibbon's judgment was that what produced the 'redoubled fury' in the Hippodrome was senseless...2002, James Allan Stewart Evans, The Age of Justinian..., p. 38
  2. (informal, Australian rules football) Carlton Football Club.
  3. (informal, rugby league) New South Wales.
  4. (informal) Birmingham City FC.
  5. (informal) Everton FC.
  6. (informal) Chelsea FC.
  7. (informal) Manchester City FC.

Synonyms of blues

24 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of blues

pluralblues

Origin of blues

In reference to the ancient Roman and medieval Byzantine racing faction, a calque of Latin venetī (“Sea-Blues”) or factio veneta (“the sea-blue faction”) and Byzantine Greek Βένετοι (Bénetoi, “Blues”).

Words formed from blues

Phrases with blues

73 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with blues

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blues

What does blues mean?
Blues means a feeling of sadness or depression.
What is blues the plural of?
Blues is the plural of blue.
What part of speech is blues?
Blues can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce blues?
Blues is pronounced /bluːz/.
What is the plural of blues?
The plural of blues is blues.

Words near blues in the dictionary

  1. bluer-eyed
  2. Bluerina
  3. bluerinse
  4. bluerinses
  5. bluers
  6. blues
  7. blues and twos
  8. blues scale
  9. blues scales
  10. blues-rock
  11. blueschist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blues (page history and authors); Blues (page history and authors); blue (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-blues.wav.

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