All the Variations, Shades, and Definitions of Blue

 Overview:

• An unexpectedly multifaceted English word examined through color, emotion, temperature, and cultural usage—plus comparisons to Russian and historical linguistics.

Why it came up:

• The hosts had recently discussed Russian—the language’s treatment of blue inspired today’s topic.

Linguistic Insight: Russian Words for “Blue”

• Russian distinguishes light and dark blue with two separate terms:
  • синий
     (siniy) — dark blue
  • голубой
     (goluboy) — light blue
• Scientific studies show Russian speakers identify shades of blue faster and more precisely than English speakers because their brains associate distinct words with each hue.
• English only modifies blue with adjectives (e.g., sky blue, navy blue, midnight blue), while Russian encodes the difference as separate words entirely.

English Uses of “Blue” - The hosts brainstormed, then checked definitions in the Oxford Language Dictionary.

1. Color:
   • Basic meaning: hue between green and violet.
   • Nuances: sky blue, ocean blue, navy, azure.
   • Describes appearance of things (skin tone from cold, animals like blue jays or Russian Blue cats).
   • Used categorically (even in physics: “blue quark”).
2. Feeling:
   • Emotional state of sadness or melancholy (“feeling blue”).
3. Content Rating:
   • “Blue humor” or “blue movie” = off-color, obscene, or adult-themed material.
4. Moral Tone (dated):
   • “Blue” once meant rigidly religious or moralistic — ironic given the modern usage for adult entertainment.
5. Nouns Representing Things:
   • Civil War: Union Army (“the Blues”).
   • Clothing color references, butterflies, and species names.
6. Verbs:
   • To “blue” metal (giving it a gray-blue finish).
   • “Bluing” laundry (washing whites with blue tint).
   • Historical variant of “blow” (as in “blew it all on sweets”).
7. Cooking Temperature (modern usage):
   • “Blue” or “extra rare” steak (110–115°F / 43–46°C).
   • So little cooked that the reddish interior gives the surface a bluish reflection.
   • Not temperature-safe per USDA guidelines (minimum 145°F).

Cultural and Personal Tangents

• Mention of “Code Blue” (hospital emergency) and “Blue Light Special” (retail slogan).
• “Feeling blue” leads to nostalgic reference to the song “I’m Blue.”
• Discussion of food safety and different national norms.
• Anecdote: earlier favorite restaurant’s rare steak special (so cheap, it may have caused bankruptcy).
• Humor about having a “Russian Blue” cat — ironic, since in Russia the name would mean something else entirely.

Closing Observations

• Russian’s two blues highlight linguistic relativity — vocabulary shapes perception.
• English compensates with creative modifiers but lacks built-in semantic depth for shades.
• Russian possibly “superior” linguistically: clearer color distinctions, simpler consonant system, and no confusion over English C/K/S spelling.

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Any views expressed on this podcast are those solely of the hosts and is for entertainment purposes only. None of the content is medical advice or financial advice.

Special thanks to Tim Wright aka CoLD SToRAGE for his permission to use the song Operatique.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:29

Welcome to episode 80 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. Now we'll actually do the word or phrase that I had in mind as our alternative from last time, and it actually works out because part of the theme of that particular word is Russian. OK. Why? Well, today's word or phrase is the word blue. Like the color blue or the temperature of meat blue, OK, or the feeling blue, there might be lots of meanings of the word -- blue -- and break out into the song about blue. I actually used that song for a work presentation on personality traits. Oh, there you go. Indeed you're gonna have it for us. No, I don't think that I would attempt that and probably we would get demonetized or whatever. So, this particular word came up because I guess at some point, maybe I was discussing with our kids or somebody different shades of color and mentioned to them that in Russian, There's actually two different words for blue based on the shade. So there's actually the Russian. Sinoy, sin, I don't know how to pronounce Russian, but S I N I Y, and that is dark blue. And Golaboy, G O L U B O Y -- for light -- blue. OK, I mean, that makes so much sense because the colors are very different. Yes, I think it does make sense. I wish that we had similar words that were explicitly different in English for a dark blue and a light blue because I do think that they are different enough that it does necessitate different words for them. I also would think the same thing for perhaps green, like a dark green or a light green are very different. And that we do have words that modify the word green or modify the word blue for the different shades like hunter green or sky blue, where those do describe different shades of colors, but it's interesting to note that Russian speakers can often distinguish between different colors of blue much more quickly than somebody that does not actually have words for different shades of blue. And it actually can even affect their perception in terms of how they receive different colors within the blue spectrum. You mean they can tell what color something is faster, or when they're describing it, they can describe it quicker or better? So they would be able to basically look at two shades of blue and determine that they are either the same or different, and in the case of them being different, they would actually be able to come up with that conclusion faster than if there was a non-Russian speaker doing that same test. So like some of the aptitude tests where you have to determine if the colors are the same or not to determine if you have any sight problems or anything like that. That in the instance of different shades of blue that are nearly identical, they actually can distinguish the difference faster and more accurately. And you think it's because they have a subcategory. That's the conclusion of these various scientific tests that have done these studies is, yes, that the linguistic connection in their brain actually makes them have better aptitude at color identification visually. Do you think it's like, would that be the same argument as like pink and red for us? Cause I feel like technically they're the same, right? Pink is just red with a bunch of white. Yeah, and I think there's actually some languages, especially maybe the Western European languages, particularly thinking of Italian, that I don't think has a word for the color pink, and they just call that red. That's interesting. Yeah, see, that's so strange, but I believe it and it makes sense. Like we have pink and red and they're so different that I agree we should have a different word for blue and a different word for the greens. I guess yellow, I don't know, yellow doesn't have that much variance set, right? Like mustard yellow, pale yellow, but. Yeah, I suppose that's true, so. I guess they say Rosa or Rose in Italian. But not sure. I'm sure there's some Western European language that I believe does not have the word pink. It does not have that as a color. OK. So perhaps for the remainder of the episode, we can take our best guess on coming up with all the English variations of the word blue and see if we hit all the different definitions in terms of how that can be used. So, we already touched on the color. Obviously, there's a whole variety of shades of blue, but ocean blue, sky blue, baby blue are some particular shades that come to my mind, any other particular blue colors that are more impactful in your experience? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if they're real colors, like bright blue. Light blue, but I don't know. Because there'd be a completely different category, right, for like the teals and all that that are the bluish greens. Yeah, I think so, teal, turquoise, those type of bluish greens, but it's just blue with white or black added. Yes, the shade of blue, essentially. -- I -- like midnight blue, -- really dark -- blue. That's true. There you go. So, obviously blue as a color. I mentioned blue as a temperature. So basically, if you order your steak blue, that's a particular temperature that's even less than rare. -- Why is it called -- blue? -- I don't -- know. Because obviously it's not blue. It's like red, red. That's true. It might have something to do with seafood because typically you would order seafood as blue, not necessarily beef or other types of meat within that red meat category. But they can, right, because I feel like I've seen that before. So like beef tartare and other prime cuts, you could order blue. I don't think I ever have. I have ordered sushi, like tuna steaks, blue, and it's basically like sushi, but you have to make sure it's sushi grade fish that you're eating at that point in time, cause it is not cooked, essentially. Remember that restaurant, I mean, it was like 15 years ago that we used to go to, and they had a special once a week. And the appetizer was huge. And then we got a steak inside and it was just so much food. So we'd eat the appetizer as our main and ask for the steak as rare as possible, and then we'd go home and eat it the next day, like cook it up. That is true. Yes, I do remember that. That was probably why they went out of business. Yeah, it was so cheap, it was insane. And we got multiple meals out of it. We did. But we always look, they'd always be like surprised, and be like, as rare as you can make it. So blue is a cooking temperature. We'll circle back to all these and see if we can determine any particular etymology or definitions that we're missing, but on to the next one was blue as a feeling. So if you're sad or depressed, then maybe you're feeling blue. OK, I'm buying that. I'm having a hard time not singing the song because every time you think I just hear I'm blue and it just keeps going. I won't sing it. OK, yes, well, we can perhaps link to that particular song because we might be so old that people don't even know these things. I don't know. Our listening demographic might not know. What song we're referring to. OK, well, it's stuck in my head and it won't go away. OK. I thought there would be more, but maybe there's not. Is there just blue, the color, blue, the temperature, and blue the feeling? Well, that's all we can come up with, so I guess we will turn to our resources and see what Oxford Language Dictionary has to say about this, OK. There is code blue. Does that count? Code blue, like an emergency. Yeah, I don't know what it even means, but I always hear it on. -- Like doctor -- shows or blue light special. I remember those. -- I was like Kmart reference -- that is. All right. So, Oxford Language Dictionary going in the order that they have is Number one, a color intermediate between green and violet, as of the sky or sea on a sunny day. So we had that one, blue as the color. Azure is one of the examples of a specific shade of blue. So there you go. It can be used to describe a person's skin tone as a result of cold or breathing difficulties. OK. It can be used to describe a bird or other animal that has blue markings, so, namely a blue jay as an example. OK. It can be used of cats, foxes, and rabbits having fur of a smoky gray color. But aren't these all colors? Yes, these are all under the subcategory one colors. OK. So the blue fox or a blue Russian cat breed. I'd put all these under blue. Yes, these are all subcategories of blue of a ski run. The 2nd lowest level of difficulty. Within physics denoting one of three colors of a quark. So I guess they're just color coded probably for reference in terms of the different states that a quirk could be in. OK. So more of a categorical definition than an actual color, I would assume. Number 2, of a person or mood, melancholy, sad or depressed, so we got that one. It can be used of an off-color movie, -- joke or -- story. Yeah, like don't play like I don't watch Blue. It means like you don't watch something inappropriate, yeah, like the adult content. Right, so that is number 3. Number 4 is a dated definition. It says rigidly religious or moralistic. How would you use that in a sentence then? It does not give an example. Cause it seems absolutely counter to the other one we just said, or talks about adult content. So. Yes, I'm not sure. Maybe we can do some more research on that one. And then it goes on to some other uses of blue as a noun, so blue colors in terms of clothing, blue armies in terms of the Union Army in the Civil War. It can also be used specifically for a species of butterfly, blue butterfly. And then as a verb, it says that you can make something blue by either heating metal, so as to give it a grayish blue finish, so you could blue steel, or you could wash white clothes with bluing, and then they basically turn blue as a result of that process. But nothing about the food. Is that a different spelling? Is that why it doesn't come out? And then there's also a dated definition for squander or recklessly spend. They bled it all on sweets, toys, and cigarettes is the example. I feel like that's blue, B L E W, yes, hm, that's interesting. -- Was it originally -- blue? It is because it's a variant of blow in the old, old English. Blue is a variant of blow, yes. So I wonder if that's another instance where we just changed the spelling to B L E W so that it was not confused with B L U E. Very strange. No, it does not have in the official definitions from Oxford Language Dictionary, the particular temperature. So if I Google specifically blue cooking temperature, it does come up a blue cook steak has an internal temperature between 110 and 115 °F, 43 to 46 °C for our international listeners. That's not, it's, it's not safe, no, not at all. It's also referred to as extra rare, I guess, in the modern day lexicon. So maybe that's why it's not in. Our Oxford Language dictionary. And apparently, it's called blue because the outside is seared and so little cooked that the outside of the steak actually doesn't even turn necessarily blackened or brown. That it's so little cooked that. The interior of the steak sort of shines through that brown color and makes it look blue. Oh, interesting, OK. So, in case you're wondering, the USDA recommends a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F for cooked beef, so it is far outside of that particular safety standard. And in fact, rare is outside of that standard. You need to get to like medium rare or definitely medium to hit that particular safety standard, so keep that in mind if you're ordering a steak at a questionable restaurant. Or just susceptible to food poisoning. That's true. So, a little bit of a shorter episode, but hopefully one that you found interesting and entertaining on all the different variations of blue, as well as the interesting anecdotes about Russian and the fact that they have two different words for different shades of blue. So, another reason that perhaps Russian is a superior language to English, not only the C's and S's and K's, but also the words they have for colors. It's ironic cause one of our cats is a blue Russian, but that wouldn't even be an accurate term. In Russia I don't know. I suppose they would have to probably call that the dark blue color of a cat, or maybe they call it something completely different. Maybe we'll find out next time. So from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.