black and blue
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
See also: black-and-blue
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]- black-and-blue (attributive, before noun only)
Etymology
[edit]From Middle English blak and blo, blac and bla (“very dark, bruised”), equivalent to black + and + blow (dialectal term for blue).
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]black and blue (not comparable)
- (colloquial, of a person) Having obvious bruises of the skin, typically from falling or being hit or punched.
- My arm is still black and blue from slipping on the ice yesterday.
- 1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 167:
- The whole benighted, blooming crew,
The Puddin'-thieves, the Usher too,
Are being beaten black and blue
With bottles on the pate.
Translations
[edit]covered in bruises
|
Verb
[edit]black and blue (third-person singular simple present black and blues, present participle black and blueing or black and bluing, simple past and past participle black and blued)
- (colloquial or slang) to bruise, to strike (a person in such a way as to discolour the skin without breaking it).
- 1991, John Vernon, Peter Doyle: A Novel, Random House (NY):
- ... he black-and-blued her eyes he cooked a big meal to make it up to her. He went out and stole a neighbor's hog or caught some rice birds ... This was a country of rice plantations, but Twig and Peggy lived upriver, where rice […]
- 1995, Ol' Dirty Bastard (lyrics and music), “Protect Ya Neck II the Zoo”, in Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version[1]:
- Come on through I black and blue your whole crew
Then I get Rudy with the Hong Kong Phoo'
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English multiword terms
- English colloquialisms
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- English verbs
- English slang
- English alliterative phrases
- English coordinated pairs