have the blues

Idioms and Phrases

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 .