blues

Pluralblues

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A musical form of African-American origin, typically built on an eight-bar or twelve-bar structure and using the blues scale.

   He plays the blues with a slide guitar and a worn-out amplifier.

   Musicologists trace the blues back to the work songs and field hollers of the Deep South.

   Note

   As a genre, the music is defined by structure as much as by mood. Its eight-bar or twelve-bar progressions carry a scale with flattened third, fifth and seventh degrees, heard against a largely major harmony. As the name of the genre it usually takes the article, as in "influenced by the blues." Before another noun it drops the article: blues musicians, a blues guitarist.

2. 2
   nouncolloquialcountable or uncountable

   A state of feeling sad, gloomy, or depressed.

   He gets the blues every year around the holidays.

   Nothing shakes the blues like a long walk along the shore.

   Similarsadness, depression, unhappiness, misery, sorrow

   Oppositehappiness, joy

   Note

   Low spirits nearly always come plural and with the article: you get the blues, have the blues, and the blues can hit you hard. The phrasing is old. In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1881–1882), idle men would have "fallen in the blues." The word is informal and suits conversation. Blueness is the only synonym it pairs with.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A piece of music composed according to blues forms.

   Her album opens with a mournful blues about leaving home.

   The pianist improvised a blues over the standard chord changes.

   Note

   Musicians count individual pieces, so a single piece is singular and takes the indefinite article: "my next number is a blues in G." That small article is the whole difference from the genre, which is "the blues." Players use this count noun naturally on stage and in rehearsal, often with a key attached, such as a blues in E or a slow blues in B-flat.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A mainly blue uniform, particularly one worn for full dress.

   He looked sharp in his blues at the formal review.

   She kept her blues immaculate for inspection day.

   Note

   The uniform most often appears in the fixed phrase dress blues, the formal version worn for parades and ceremonies. Jason Isbell's 2007 song "Dress Blues" draws on that ceremonial weight, setting the uniform against the violence of a desert war. On its own the plural works too, as in "in his blues." It stays plural even when it refers to one person's single uniform.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialcountable or uncountableplural

   The sum of one's life experience, especially the hardships one has faced.

   His music came straight out of his blues, every bit of it earned.

   You can hear a lifetime of blues in her voice.

   Similarmisery, sorrow, grief, sadness, distress

   Note

   Here the word stretches from a passing mood to a whole life's store of trouble. It grows out of the feeling of sadness but belongs to the person rather than the day. Verb agreement is unsettled, and both choices sound natural: "your blues is just like mine" and "your blues are just like mine." Either is fine in informal speech.

   Your blues is just like mine.

   Your blues are just like mine.

6. 6
   nouncolloquialcountable or uncountableplural

   A negative emotional state brought on by a particular activity, job, experience, or idea.

   Many graduates feel the blues once the excitement of the ceremony fades.

   The long deployment left him with a bad case of the blues.

   Similarsadness, depression, unhappiness, misery, distress

   Note

   Gloom with a named cause usually takes a possessive in front. The lonely man's blues, the butcher's blues: the first noun says who suffers it or what work brings it on. The pattern is informal and easy to extend to any job or situation. The article stays, so the phrase is "have the butcher's blues," never "have butcher's blues."

   I've got the lonely man's blues.

   If you work here long enough, you'll have the butcher's blues just like me.

7. 7
   nounslangcountable or uncountable

   Any of various blue street pills made to resemble prescription painkiller tablets.

   Police seized hundreds of blues in the overnight raid.

   Counterfeit blues circulating in the area turned out to contain fentanyl.

   Note

   Street slang and police slang share this term for counterfeit tablets. The pills are pressed blue to look like prescription opioid painkillers, and they often contain fentanyl instead of the drug they imitate. The word counts pills, as in "hundreds of blues." It belongs to news reports and the street, not to pharmacy or medicine, where the actual drug name is used.

8. 8
   noun

   Plural of blue.

   The decorator compared several blues before settling on one for the walls.

   Cool blues dominate the upper half of the painting.

   Note

   The ordinary counting plural, used when blue names one shade among several: cool blues, muted blues, the blues a decorator lays side by side. The same plural serves a team that plays in blue and the blue uniform that becomes dress blues. Keep it apart from the low mood, an unrelated use whose -s no longer counts separate things.

9. 9
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of blue.

   He blues the gun barrel using a chemical bath.

   The traditional process blues the metal to a deep, even finish.

   Note

   This verb form looks exactly like the noun plural but follows its own meanings. A gunsmith who blues steel is treating it chemically against rust, and a laundry that blues linen brightens it with a blue rinse. In Australian slang someone who blues is brawling or arguing. Dated slang also used it for spending wildly, as in "he blues his wages."

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