blues

cry the blues

1. Literally, to sing blues music or in that style. There was this old man crying the blues at the bar last night; it was a really moving bit of music.

2. By extension, to complain, whine, or express grief, especially as a means of gaining sympathy from others. Many people will cry the blues over trivial inconveniences, while millions of others silently suffer real hardships every day.

have the blues

To be or feel generally sad or melancholy. I don't know what it is, but I find I always have the blues on Sundays.

baby blues

1. A usually brief period of sadness, anxiety, and mood swings experienced by a large percentage of women after giving birth. When I had the baby blues after having my first child, I would find myself crying without knowing why.

2. Blue eyes, especially those that are light blue. I just had to ask for Sean's number after I got a glimpse of his baby blues—I'd never seen such striking eyes before!

*blues

1. sadness; a mood of depression. (*Typically: get ~; have ~.) You'll have to excuse Bill. He's getting the blues thinking about Jane. I get the blues every time I hear that song.

2. a traditional style of popular music characterized by lyrics expressing hardship, lost love, etc. Buddy had been singing the blues ever since the Depression.

sing the blues

to complain Computer programmers are singing the blues because business is bad and no one is hiring.

Etymology: based on the type of music called the blues (a musical form in which songs often are about difficulties or bad luck)

the baby blues

a feeling of sadness that some women experience after they have given birth to a baby According to this article, as many as 60% of women suffer from the baby blues.

See cry like a baby, throw the baby out with the bath water, wet the baby's head

have the blues

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.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Belshatzzar	-	Biblical Hebrew
Addyson	AD-i-sən	English (Modern)
Munashe	-	Southern African, Shona
Dewey	-	Welsh
Reuben	ROO-bən (English)	Biblical, Hebrew, English
Benson	BEN-sən	English