have the blues

1. Also, feel blue. Feel depressed or sad, as in After seeing the old house in such bad shape, I had the blues for weeks, or Patricia tends to feel blue around the holidays. The noun blues, meaning “low spirits,” was first recorded in 1741 and may come from blue devil, a 17th-century term for a baleful demon, or from the adjective blue meaning “sad,” a usage first recorded in Chaucer's Complaint of Mars (c. 1385). The idiom may have been reinforced by the notion that anxiety produces a livid skin color. Also see blue funk.

Example Sentences

But not since the 1993-94 season have the Blues suffered 10 defeats after 23 games of a league campaign.

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One of Mr. Moloney’s more lighthearted vaudeville songs, “If It Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews,” included a verse about immigrants as foundational to the country’s success: “What would this great Yankee nation really, really ever do/If it wasn’t for a Levy, a Monahan or Donohue/Where would we get our policemen/Why Uncle Sam would have the Blues/Without the Pats and Isadores, there’d be no big department stores/If it wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews.”

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To have the blues is not necessarily about being sad.

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I’ve always believed that to have the blues is simply knowing how intensely you must barricade your door to keep the demons out.

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There’s an old idea about how someone doesn’t play the blues, they have the blues, and through that possession, the music arises.

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