blues

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a mood of melancholy; a melancholic African-American musical genre

   She played the blues on her battered guitar late into the night.

A shortening of 'blue devils' ('despondency, low spirits,' 18th century); the musical sense developed in early-20th-century African-American culture. Blue is from Old French bleu, of Germanic origin.

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