blueness
(ˈbluːnɪs)
Forms: 5 blunesse, 5–7 blewnes, 6–7 blewnesse, 8– blueness.
[f. blue a. + -ness.]
1. The state or quality of being blue, blue colour.
| 1600 Fairfax Tasso vi. xc, His azure robe the orient blewnesse lost. 1742 Richardson Pamela IV. 35 The..fine thin Blueness given to the first Milk. 1882 Howells in Longm. Mag. I. 51 A..sky..of more than Italian blueness. |
2. The quality or state of being livid, as a bruise; the mark of a bruise.
| ? 1491 Caxton 15 Oes in Blades Caxton 353 The blewnes of thy woundes. 1577 tr. Bullinger's Decades (1592) 47 And with the blewnesse of his stripes are we healed. 1678 Otway Friendship in Fash. 14 Ay, and then that blewness under the eyes. |
3. fig. The quality of a blue-stocking; feminine learning or pedantry.
| 1881 M. A. Lewis Two Pretty G. III. 37 They might go in for some other line—fastness, or blueness, or music. |
4. Indelicacy, indecency. (Cf. blue a. 9.)
| 1840 Carlyle Diderot, Ess. 240 (L.) The occasional blueness of both [writings] shall not altogether affright us. 1891 Sat. Rev. 8 Aug. 168/2 That tinge of ‘blueness’ which repels English propriety. |
5. a. A state of depression or melancholy.
| 1867 W. James Let. 7 Nov. (1920) I. 120, I am in a mood of indigestion and blueness. 1911 J. C. Lincoln Cap'n Warren's Wards ix. 147 Before evening his blueness had disappeared. |
b. The fact or quality of music being ‘blue’ (see blue a. 3 d). orig. U.S.
| 1949 R. Blesh Shining Trumpets ii. viii. 193 The beautiful, unveiled tone that on other occasions could transmit a blueness difficult to imagine. 1959 W. Russell in M. T. Williams Art of Jazz (1960) 36 Those devices that gave a feeling of blueness to his harmony. |