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Definition 2024


unblue

unblue

English

Adjective

unblue (not comparable)

  1. (rare outside philosophy) Not blue.
    • 1992, Susan Burmeister-Brown, Linda Davies (editors), Glimmer Train Stories:
      [] a god in an unblue sky.
    • 1997, University of Arizona Dept. of English, Sonora Review
      Soon an associational chain reaction occurs that stains blue all that has remained unblue...
    • 2000, Charles Travis, Unshadowed thought: representation in thought and language:
      A philosopher, busily sorting the world into the blue and the unblue, tells us that some ink is blue. We look at the ink one way, and it looks blue.
    • 2007, Barbara Blackman, Bryony Cosgrove, Judith Wright, Portrait of a friendship:
      Mind you, if they fly in downstairs, they are quite happy to settle for unblue mangoes.

Verb

unblue (third-person singular simple present unblues, present participle unblueing or unbluing, simple past and past participle unblued)

  1. (intransitive, rare, chiefly poetic) To cease being blue.
    • 2006, Honor Moore, Red Shoes: Poems (ISBN 0393329100), page 26:
      Blue at some distances unblues, []
    • 2007, Barry Hannah, Yonder Stands Your Orphan (ISBN 1555846467), page 18
      The boy was very hurt in the throat and his face was only now unbluing.
  2. (transitive, rare, chiefly poetic) To cause (something) to cease being blue; to make (something) not blue.
    • 1987, Indiana Review, issue 10, page 24:
      [] to clothe bodies surprised by bullets, to unblue hands frozen in ditches, []
    • 2010, Ron Dakron, Newt (ISBN 0930773195), page 26:
      They look like iced teeth where a storm unblues them.