steel blue
1
3.5
- noun
:
azul acero
- George Washington's steel-blue eyes stared out at her from a weird portrait she had never noticed before.
- steel blue eyes
- steel blue sky
Examples
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The artist mixed colors to achieve a striking steel blue that resembled the ocean on a clear day.
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And then he looked at me with those steel blue eyes and he said this, this is the place we write from.
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''Steel blue-gray clouds over small lights.
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It was the plain-jane Crown Vic, in steel blue metallic, neither light nor dark.
Fiction book (2002) -
He narrowed his rheumy, steel-blue eyes that were unwaveringly studying Jack through wire-rimmed glasses.
Fiction book (1999) -
As the rising sun cleared the hill behind us, the steel blue sky gradually brightened, revealing the most romantic and magnificent edifice on earth: the Taj Mahal in Agra was bathed in soft pink light.
Academic text (2001) -
The sky turned a beautiful steel blue as the sun began to set behind the mountains.
-
She chose a steel blue for her bedroom walls, creating a calm and serene atmosphere.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
The color between green and violet like a clear sky
5
2.0
Gray with a little blue like the sky before a storm
2
2.7
A color that is mainly blue with some gray
2
3.5
A dark grey color with a slight blue or purple tone
2
3.7
A pale blue color with a slight grey tint
1
2.5
A grey color with a touch of blue
1
3.4
A blue color like the sky when clouds make it less bright
1
3.9
A dark grey color like iron
A dull grey-blue color like old metal
A dark grey color with a slight blue or purple tone
How Dark
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'steel blue' is directly compositional: 'steel' specifies a steel-like (greyish metallic) quality applied to 'blue', so the meaning 'a blue tinged with grey, like steel' is readily inferable from the parts. This color-naming pattern (material + color) is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows 'steel' and 'blue' would almost certainly understand the MWE.
Etymology
Steel blue may come from the cool, blue-grey shine of real steel. People used that image of metal to name a kind of blue with a grey touch, so the term now means 'a shade of blue tinged with grey'.