blee
Part of speech: noun
intj
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English blee, ble, from Old English blēo, bleoh (“color, hue; complexion, form”), from Proto-West Germanic *blīu (“color, blee”).
Cognate with Scots ble, blee, blie (“color, complexion”), Old Frisian blī, blie (“color, hue; complexion”) (whence North Frisian bläy, Saterland Frisian Bläier), Middle Dutch blie, blye (“color”). Doublet of bly.
Inflected forms:
form: blees
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Color, hue.
pos: noun
tags: countable
poetic
uncountable
examples: Then the captain, young Lord Leigh, with his eyes so grey of blee,— / Toll slowly.
IT was a Mothering Sunday ; / The sky was clear to see / Above the white, white snowdrop, / And the crocus of golden blee.
The captain wonderful to see / With eyes a-change in depth and blee; / A-change, a-change for ever and aye, / Blue, and purple, and black, and gray; / And hair like the weed that finds a home / In the depth of a trail of white sea-foam.
1913, Francis Thompson, "Stolen Fruit of Eden-Tree (‘The Schoolmaster for God’)", in Brigid M. Boardman (ed.), The Poems of Francis Thompson: A New Edition, Continuum, 2001, lines 59 to 64.
The fruit thereof is fair and fine, / And golden of its blee, / That well the Son of God might think / It came of Paradise—tree, / Nor deem how its root with cold Pit-fire / Is suckled evilly.
"Live, live," and "Here, here," the blackbird / From the top of the bare ash-tree, / Over the acres whistles / With beak of yellow blee.
gloss: Color of the face, complexion, coloring.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
countable
uncountable
examples: "The Felon Sow of Rokeby and the Freers of Richmond", in Christopher Clarkson, The History of Richmond, in the County of York, Thomas Bowman (publ., 1821, appendix, cvii.
The sew she would not Latin heare, / But rudely rushed at the Frear, / That he blinked all his blee ; / And when she would have taken her hold, / The Fryar leaped as Jesus wold, / And bealed him with a tree.
"The Gay Goss-hawk", The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott: first series, containing Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Sir Tristrem, and Dramatic Pieces, Baudry's European Library (publ.), 1838, page 189 (glossed as “bloom”).
And pale, pale grew her rosy cheeck, / That was sae bright of blee,⁴ / And she seem'd to be as surely dead / As any one could be.
Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow beaming brilliancy, the dream of philosophy, whose eyes were fraught with Babel's gramarye and her eyebrows were arched as for archery; her breath breathed ambergris and perfumery and her lips were sugar to taste and carnelian to see.
1927, P. Geyl (tr.), The Tale of Beatrice, Martinus Nijhoff (publ.), page 5.
So there they sat a long long time, / Nor could I tell you in my rhyme / How oft their cheeks did change their blee.
gloss: Consistency, form, texture.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
countable
uncountable
examples: I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings / Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee: / And earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs, / Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy.
gloss: General resemblance, likeness; appearance, aspect, look.
pos: noun
tags: East-Anglia
countable
uncountable
examples: 16th c., Nicholas Grimald, The life and poems of Nicholas Grimald, Yale Studies in English, Volume 69, 1925, page 379.
Meane beautie doth soone fade: therof playn hee, / Who nothing loves in woman, but her blee.
BLEE, s[ubstantive] general resemblance, not "colour and complexion," as the dictt. [dictionaries in general] give it; Mr. Nares asserts that it was obsolete in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. If so, we have a very extraordinary instance of the renascence of a word; for it is in use every day in the sense here given to it. Ex. "That boy has a strong blee of his father." br. [Brockett's Glossary] in the sense of complexion. ch. p. g. [Chaucer; Percy's Glossary]
gloss: Expressing disgust or trepidation.
pos: intj
tags: informal
examples: Bikers […] tend to appear at the edges of the road and then zoom in front of your car. […] As you have probably found out already, one touch of these and it's time to order the wooden box. (Blee!)
It's a boring life being a cave man. No telly, no video and not even a Spectrum! Blee! All you can do is eat, but Brontosaurus steaks can be very tough.
Synonyms: color
colour
hue
complexion
Related words: bly
Translations: