Blue | Description, Etymology, & Facts | Britannica (2025)

blue, in physics, light in the wavelength range of 450–495 nanometres in the visible spectrum. After violet, blue is the spectral region with the shortest wavelengths discernible to the human eye. In art, blue is a colour on the conventional colour wheel, located between green and violet and opposite orange, its ccomplementary colour.

Blue is a basic colour term added to languages after black, white, red, yellow, and green. The term blue derives from Proto-Germanic blæwaz and Old French blo or bleu. One of the first written records of the term is from the South English Legendary, a collection of saints’ lives (c. 1300): “This on schal beo fair blu cloth, / This othur grene” (“This one shall be fair blue cloth, / This other green”).

Pigments for blue have come from azurite, ultramarine, smalt, indigo, a double oxide of cobalt and aluminum, and artificial chemical compounds. Indigo was used as a dye to colour cloth for trousers, which became known as blue jeans.

In addition to the colour wheel, various other colour systems have been used to classify blue. Before the invention of colour photography, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour (1814) was frequently used by scientists attempting to accurately describe colours observed in nature. In that book the so-called tint “Prussian Blue” is compared to the “Beauty Spot on Wing of Mallard Drake,” the “Stamina of Bluish Purple Anemone,” and “Blue Copper Ore.” In the Munsell colour system—adopted in the 20th century to standardize colour, usually for industry—one of the many variations of blue is identified as 5PB 4/14.