bluish

UK/ˈbluːɪʃ/US/ˈbluːɪʃ/

adjectiveB1+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,427 of 15,258leans written

Bluish means slightly blue in colour. A bluish tinge, bluish grey, bluish in the light.

The -ish ending hedges, which is exactly what colour words need — very little in the world is a pure colour. Bluish lips or fingers are a clinical sign of low oxygen and a reason to seek help. Note the spelling, which drops the e of blue, and blueish, which is also accepted.

Definitions of bluish

1adjectivebluishSlightly blue in colour.B1+
“The mountains looked bluish in the distance.”

bluish is a colour quality.

Where it comes from

Middle English blewissh is blue plus -ish, an ending meaning somewhat. Greenish and reddish are formed the same way.

Middle English
blewissh
English, today
bluish

From Middle English blewissh, blewisch (also Middle English bloysh), equivalent to blue + -ish.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

bluish in the wild

In NGC 4676A a core with some dark markings is surrounded by a bluish white remnant of spiral arms.
Mice Galaxies
NGC 4676B has a yellowish core and two arcs; arm remnants underneath are bluish as well.
Mice Galaxies
An eruption cyst, or eruption hematoma, is a bluish swelling that occurs on the soft tissue over an erupting tooth.
Eruption cyst
Both sexes are similar with an olive-brown plumage, bluish-grey below, white undertail coverts, brown iris, bare pink facial skin, bluish-yellow bill and dark olive legs.
Moluccan megapode

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

blue

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