It has historically been called livid, from the Latinlividus, meaning "a dull leaden-blue color". The word entered English in the fifteenth century, first in medical use to describe the bluish-gray discoloration of bruised or damaged flesh, the condition also expressed in the phrase "black and blue". The familiar modern sense of livid meaning furiously angry developed later, via the intermediate sense of a face turning pale or ashen with rage.
There is a wide range of named blue-gray or livid shades, including steel blue, glaucous, cadet grey, and Payne's grey, among others. The color appears in nature, culture, and military uniform traditions around the world.
Variations of blue-gray
The colors below are arranged according to value (brightness, the V code in HSV), lightest at the top and darkest towards the bottom.
The historical name for this color is lavender gray. It is listed in A Dictionary of Color as one of the three major variations of lavender in 1930 along with lavender blue (shown below) and [floral] lavender (also shown below). (This book also designates a fourth shade of lavender, called old lavender, also shown below). This color is similar to Prismacolor colored pencil PC 1026, Greyed Lavender.
Cadet grey, shown at right, and cadet blue, are shades of color used in military uniforms.
The first recorded use of cadet grey as a color name in English was in 1912. Before 1912, the word cadet grey was used as a name for a type of military issue uniform.
Cool gray is a medium light color gray mixed with the color blue.
Another name for this color is gray-blue.
This color is a dull shade of blue-gray.
This color is identical with color sample #203 (identified as "gray blue") at the following website: https://web.archive.org/web/20170810183646/http://tx4.us/nbs/nbs-g.htm—The ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Colo(u)r Names (1955), a website for stamp collectors to evaluate the colors of their stamps.
The color shadow blue is displayed at right. Shadow blue is a color formulated by Crayola in 1990 as one of the colors in its Silver Swirls specialty box of metallic colors.
Although this is supposed to be a metallic color, there is no mechanism for displaying metallic colors on a computer.
Rhythm is one of the colors on the Resene Color List, a color list widely popular in Australia and New Zealand. The color "rhythm" was formulated in 2004.
Blue Grey is a type of beef cattle popular in Scotland and the north of England.
Medicine/sociology
Upper-class families who used silver eating utensils every day gradually ingested small pieces of silver into their bodies and eventually developed a mild form of a condition called argyria, in which the skin takes on a blue-gray color; thus, they became known as bluebloods.
12The color displayed in the color box above matches the color called livid in the 1930 book by Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill; Discussion of the color Livid Page 165
12Oxford English Dictionary, "livid, adj.", revised 2016.
↑Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 197
↑The color displayed in the color box above matches the color called iceberg in the 1930 book by Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill; the color iceberg is displayed on page 95, Plate 36, Color Sample H4.
↑Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 196; Color Sample of Iceberg: Page 95 Plate 36 Color Sample H4
↑Of the various tones of Payne's Grey shown on the indicated web page of the Ridgway color list, the color displayed in the color box above matches most closely the color called Payne's Gray in the 1930 book by Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill; the color Payne's Gray is displayed on page 117, Plate 47, Color Sample A9.
↑Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 201; Color Sample of Payne's Gray: Page 117 Plate 47 Color Sample A9
↑Alexander, Wesley J. History of the Medical Use of Silver
Color coordinates
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