- published: 28 Aug 2014
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Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 450–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal mixture of red and green light. On a colour wheel based on traditional colour theory (RYB) where blue was considered a primary colour, its complementary colour is considered to be orange (based on the Munsell colour wheel).
In Modern English, "blue" is one of the basic colour terms, and one of the seven spectral colours, intermediate between violet (purple) and cyan. It comprises a considerable number of identifiable subcategories that can be identified with descriptive terms like navy blue (a dark blue), cyan blue (or "blue-green", on the boundary to the green range), or sky blue (azure).
The word itself was loaned into Middle English from the Old French word bleu, blo "pale, pallid, discoloured; blue, blue-grey", itself from an Old Frankish *blao.
Shell may refer to: