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All the Variations, Shades, and Definitions of Blue · I Hate Talking

• 0:29
  I Hate Talking: Welcome to episode 80 of I Hate Talking.
• 0:32
  I Hate Talking: Hi everyone.
• 0:33
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 0:44
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 0:45
  I Hate Talking: Why?
• 0:46
  I Hate Talking: Well, today's word or phrase is the word blue.
• 0:51
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 1:03
  I Hate Talking: I actually used that song for a work presentation on personality traits.
• 1:08
  I Hate Talking: Oh, there you go.
• 1:09
  I Hate Talking: Indeed you're gonna have it for us.
• 1:11
  I Hate Talking: No, I don't think that I would attempt that and probably we would get demonetized or whatever.
• 1:16
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 1:39
  I Hate Talking: So there's actually the Russian.
• 1:43
  I Hate Talking: Sinoy, sin, I don't know how to pronounce Russian, but S I N I Y, and that is dark blue.
• 1:51
  I Hate Talking: And Golaboy, G O L U B O Y -- for light -- blue.
• 1:58
  I Hate Talking: OK, I mean, that makes so much sense because the colors are very different.
• 2:02
  I Hate Talking: Yes, I think it does make sense.
• 2:05
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 2:20
  I Hate Talking: I also would think the same thing for perhaps green, like a dark green or a light green are very different.
• 2:27
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 2:57
  I Hate Talking: And it actually can even affect their perception in terms of how they receive different colors within the blue spectrum.
• 3:06
  I Hate Talking: You mean they can tell what color something is faster, or when they're describing it, they can describe it quicker or better?
• 3:15
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 3:36
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 3:45
  I Hate Talking: That in the instance of different shades of blue that are nearly identical, they actually can distinguish the difference faster and more accurately.
• 3:53
  I Hate Talking: And you think it's because they have a subcategory.
• 3:56
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 4:11
  I Hate Talking: Do you think it's like, would that be the same argument as like pink and red for us?
• 4:16
  I Hate Talking: Cause I feel like technically they're the same, right?
• 4:19
  I Hate Talking: Pink is just red with a bunch of white.
• 4:23
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 4:37
  I Hate Talking: That's interesting.
• 4:39
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, see, that's so strange, but I believe it and it makes sense.
• 4:43
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 4:49
  I Hate Talking: I guess yellow, I don't know, yellow doesn't have that much variance set, right?
• 4:55
  I Hate Talking: Like mustard yellow, pale yellow, but.
• 4:58
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I suppose that's true, so.
• 5:01
  I Hate Talking: I guess they say Rosa or Rose in Italian.
• 5:06
  I Hate Talking: But not sure.
• 5:09
  I Hate Talking: I'm sure there's some Western European language that I believe does not have the word pink.
• 5:14
  I Hate Talking: It does not have that as a color.
• 5:16
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 5:17
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 5:31
  I Hate Talking: So, we already touched on the color.
• 5:34
  I Hate Talking: 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?
• 5:51
  I Hate Talking: I don't know.
• 5:53
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I don't know if they're real colors, like bright blue.
• 5:57
  I Hate Talking: Light blue, but I don't know.
• 6:00
  I Hate Talking: Because there'd be a completely different category, right, for like the teals and all that that are the bluish greens.
• 6:07
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I think so, teal, turquoise, those type of bluish greens, but it's just blue with white or black added.
• 6:15
  I Hate Talking: Yes, the shade of blue, essentially.
• 6:18
  I Hate Talking: -- I -- like midnight blue, -- really dark -- blue.
• 6:20
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 6:21
  I Hate Talking: There you go.
• 6:22
  I Hate Talking: So, obviously blue as a color.
• 6:25
  I Hate Talking: I mentioned blue as a temperature.
• 6:28
  I Hate Talking: So basically, if you order your steak blue, that's a particular temperature that's even less than rare.
• 6:39
  I Hate Talking: -- Why is it called -- blue?
• 6:41
  I Hate Talking: -- I don't -- know.
• 6:42
  I Hate Talking: Because obviously it's not blue.
• 6:43
  I Hate Talking: It's like red, red.
• 6:45
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 6:46
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 6:59
  I Hate Talking: But they can, right, because I feel like I've seen that before.
• 7:02
  I Hate Talking: So like beef tartare and other prime cuts, you could order blue.
• 7:08
  I Hate Talking: I don't think I ever have.
• 7:10
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 7:22
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 7:29
  I Hate Talking: And the appetizer was huge.
• 7:32
  I Hate Talking: And then we got a steak inside and it was just so much food.
• 7:36
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 7:46
  I Hate Talking: That is true.
• 7:46
  I Hate Talking: Yes, I do remember that.
• 7:47
  I Hate Talking: That was probably why they went out of business.
• 7:50
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, it was so cheap, it was insane.
• 7:53
  I Hate Talking: And we got multiple meals out of it.
• 7:55
  I Hate Talking: We did.
• 7:56
  I Hate Talking: But we always look, they'd always be like surprised, and be like, as rare as you can make it.
• 8:02
  I Hate Talking: So blue is a cooking temperature.
• 8:06
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 8:16
  I Hate Talking: So if you're sad or depressed, then maybe you're feeling blue.
• 8:20
  I Hate Talking: OK, I'm buying that.
• 8:22
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 8:29
  I Hate Talking: I won't sing it.
• 8:30
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 8:38
  I Hate Talking: I don't know.
• 8:39
  I Hate Talking: Our listening demographic might not know.
• 8:41
  I Hate Talking: What song we're referring to.
• 8:43
  I Hate Talking: OK, well, it's stuck in my head and it won't go away.
• 8:46
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 8:47
  I Hate Talking: I thought there would be more, but maybe there's not.
• 8:50
  I Hate Talking: Is there just blue, the color, blue, the temperature, and blue the feeling?
• 8:53
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 9:04
  I Hate Talking: There is code blue.
• 9:06
  I Hate Talking: Does that count?
• 9:07
  I Hate Talking: Code blue, like an emergency.
• 9:10
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I don't know what it even means, but I always hear it on.
• 9:13
  I Hate Talking: -- Like doctor -- shows or blue light special.
• 9:16
  I Hate Talking: I remember those.
• 9:18
  I Hate Talking: -- I was like Kmart reference -- that is.
• 9:20
  I Hate Talking: All right.
• 9:21
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 9:34
  I Hate Talking: So we had that one, blue as the color.
• 9:38
  I Hate Talking: Azure is one of the examples of a specific shade of blue.
• 9:43
  I Hate Talking: So there you go.
• 9:44
  I Hate Talking: It can be used to describe a person's skin tone as a result of cold or breathing difficulties.
• 9:51
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 9:52
  I Hate Talking: It can be used to describe a bird or other animal that has blue markings, so, namely a blue jay as an example.
• 10:01
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 10:02
  I Hate Talking: It can be used of cats, foxes, and rabbits having fur of a smoky gray color.
• 10:08
  I Hate Talking: But aren't these all colors?
• 10:09
  I Hate Talking: Yes, these are all under the subcategory one colors.
• 10:12
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 10:12
  I Hate Talking: So the blue fox or a blue Russian cat breed.
• 10:16
  I Hate Talking: I'd put all these under blue.
• 10:19
  I Hate Talking: Yes, these are all subcategories of blue of a ski run.
• 10:23
  I Hate Talking: The 2nd lowest level of difficulty.
• 10:25
  I Hate Talking: Within physics denoting one of three colors of a quark.
• 10:29
  I Hate Talking: So I guess they're just color coded probably for reference in terms of the different states that a quirk could be in.
• 10:39
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 10:39
  I Hate Talking: So more of a categorical definition than an actual color, I would assume.
• 10:45
  I Hate Talking: Number 2, of a person or mood, melancholy, sad or depressed, so we got that one.
• 10:51
  I Hate Talking: It can be used of an off-color movie, -- joke or -- story.
• 10:56
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, like don't play like I don't watch Blue.
• 10:59
  I Hate Talking: It means like you don't watch something inappropriate, yeah, like the adult content.
• 11:03
  I Hate Talking: Right, so that is number 3.
• 11:05
  I Hate Talking: Number 4 is a dated definition.
• 11:11
  I Hate Talking: It says rigidly religious or moralistic.
• 11:14
  I Hate Talking: How would you use that in a sentence then?
• 11:17
  I Hate Talking: It does not give an example.
• 11:19
  I Hate Talking: Cause it seems absolutely counter to the other one we just said, or talks about adult content.
• 11:25
  I Hate Talking: So.
• 11:26
  I Hate Talking: Yes, I'm not sure.
• 11:28
  I Hate Talking: Maybe we can do some more research on that one.
• 11:30
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 11:45
  I Hate Talking: It can also be used specifically for a species of butterfly, blue butterfly.
• 11:52
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 12:13
  I Hate Talking: But nothing about the food.
• 12:16
  I Hate Talking: Is that a different spelling?
• 12:17
  I Hate Talking: Is that why it doesn't come out?
• 12:19
  I Hate Talking: And then there's also a dated definition for squander or recklessly spend.
• 12:27
  I Hate Talking: They bled it all on sweets, toys, and cigarettes is the example.
• 12:32
  I Hate Talking: I feel like that's blue, B L E W, yes, hm, that's interesting.
• 12:37
  I Hate Talking: -- Was it originally -- blue?
• 12:39
  I Hate Talking: It is because it's a variant of blow in the old, old English.
• 12:44
  I Hate Talking: Blue is a variant of blow, yes.
• 12:46
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 12:56
  I Hate Talking: Very strange.
• 12:58
  I Hate Talking: No, it does not have in the official definitions from Oxford Language Dictionary, the particular temperature.
• 13:06
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 13:21
  I Hate Talking: That's not, it's, it's not safe, no, not at all.
• 13:26
  I Hate Talking: It's also referred to as extra rare, I guess, in the modern day lexicon.
• 13:31
  I Hate Talking: So maybe that's why it's not in.
• 13:34
  I Hate Talking: Our Oxford Language dictionary.
• 13:36
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 13:50
  I Hate Talking: That it's so little cooked that.
• 13:53
  I Hate Talking: The interior of the steak sort of shines through that brown color and makes it look blue.
• 13:58
  I Hate Talking: Oh, interesting, OK.
• 14:00
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 14:13
  I Hate Talking: And in fact, rare is outside of that standard.
• 14:17
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 14:26
  I Hate Talking: Or just susceptible to food poisoning.
• 14:31
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 14:32
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 14:49
  I Hate Talking: 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.
• 15:02
  I Hate Talking: It's ironic cause one of our cats is a blue Russian, but that wouldn't even be an accurate term.
• 15:09
  I Hate Talking: In Russia I don't know.
• 15:12
  I Hate Talking: I suppose they would have to probably call that the dark blue color of a cat, or maybe they call it something completely different.
• 15:19
  I Hate Talking: Maybe we'll find out next time.
• 15:22
  I Hate Talking: So from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.