Blueblood, a term often used to refer to WASPy or patrician folks, goes back to the 1700s and the Spanish term sangre azul. It described the class of people who never had to work outside or expose themselves to the sun, so blue veins would show through their ivory, marble-like skin. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Blueblood”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Becky, and I’m calling from Amherst, Mass.
Well, welcome to the show. Glad to talk to you.
Oh, thank you. I’m glad to be on.
How can we help you?
Well, I have a question that has to do with the origin of a descriptive term, and that is the term blue blood.
Now, I know pretty much, or I thought I did, you know, what it referred to, but I wasn’t sure where it came from, because when I think about it, it’s kind of an odd term.
Mm—what are you thinking about it?
You know, I figured it meant somebody who was wealthy or aristocratic or, you know, somebody who was, you know, from old money or something like that.
But I said to myself, you know, blood isn’t blue.
I mean, unless you’re a horseshoe crab or something.
So, you know, why would somebody who’s, you know, you know, from the nobility or royalty come to be called a blue blood?
Right.
And yet that term is in pretty common use, and it’s also in my dictionary, and you can find it online as well.
And I’ve heard a couple of different explanations, but I wasn’t sure which one would be the right one or if anybody knew.
So I said to myself, well, I have to call A Way with Words and find out.
And here we are.
Yes.
Well, there’s a pretty clear-cut origin story for this.
We got it from the Spanish in what we call a calc.
This is when you take a word or expression in another language and translate it directly word for word into the second language.
So in Spanish, it’s sangre azul, which is blue blood.
And it goes back to the 1700s in Spanish and all the varieties of Spanish that we know of.
And it has to do with the class of people who would not necessarily ever get their skin darkened by the sun.
They would be inside and protected.
They’re not working in the fields, not working with the animals.
They’re probably living in fine mansions and houses.
And so they have this ivory, beautiful, maybe even marble skin with the blue veins showing through.
You know, almost translucent, almost glowing skin, the luminescent skin.
And so you can actually see their blue veins showing through their arms and legs and whatever.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, that makes sense.
Is that one of the explanations that you came across?
Well, I mean, this whole thing started when my sister and I had been having a discussion about silverware or selling our silver.
And she found an article that was published in the L.A. Times.
And it gives another origin story for the term blue blood.
And I did not think that that was accurate.
And so I’m just, you know, we were a little concerned that maybe this reporter should have had or should not have accepted, you know, the origin story so uncritically because, you know, they’d be passing on incorrect information.
What was the story?
Anyway, you know, when I’m reading this article again, you know, the reporter doesn’t give the origin story.
He’s just quoting from a book the history of medical use of silver.
But, you know, I thought maybe he should have put a little, you know, bracket there.
You know, this origin story is not, you know, generally accepted or something.
But anyway.
So he was claiming that the origin of blue blood was because silver was used to treat certain illnesses and it can change the color and pallor of the skin.
Is that?
Yes.
Yes.
That’s probably not true.
There’s numerous reasons for this, but the short version for this is actually a complicated explanation for a rare phenomenon.
And when you look at the history of sangria sula in Spanish, we find fairly consistently that it shows up in even middle class, the language of middle class people.
And the truth is that silver treatment actually caused the skin to look gray.
Yeah.
Or black even.
Yeah, silvery.
It’s not really blue at all.
This is one of the things that Martha and I do when we look at these word origins.
We try to judge critically all these different sources, and we find again and again there are a lot of these past etymologies that need to be reexamined, and you can’t just take anyone’s word for this stuff.
Some of this stuff has been wrong for 100 or 150 years, and it’s only since a lot of databases and texts and newspapers have come online that we’ve been able to say, look, we can prove this wrong as a matter of fact without any reservation.
So, Becky, good for you for being skeptical there.
Thanks, Becky.
Okay.
Love your show.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you for calling.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
There’s an expression in Spanish that I like a lot that’s related to this.
Yeah.
Sangre de horchata.
I’ve never heard that.
Horchata blood.
Do you know what horchata is?
Sure.
I love that drink.
It’s a rice milk with cinnamon that you drink cold.
That’s delicious.
Yeah.
But sangre de horchata means if you have horchata blood, you are super calm and nothing can affect you.
Oh, it’s like you have some foie.
Yeah, exactly.
Very mellow.
Oh.
Sangre de horchata.
Ooh, I like that a lot.
I have never heard that.
