blue movie
A dated slang term for a pornographic film, common from the mid-20th century through the video era.
Definitions
A dated slang term for a pornographic film, common from the mid-20th century through the video era. The association of 'blue' with obscenity or risqué content is longstanding in English — 'blue' comedy, 'blue' material, a 'blue' joke all share the same sense. The term has been largely displaced by more explicit modern terminology but still appears in ironic, nostalgic, or period contexts.
Someone had slipped a blue movie into the VHS stack and nobody noticed until it was too late.
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(slang, dated) a pornographic film.
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- blue film86%
A blue film is a dated but still widely understood term for a pornographic movie. The phrase originated in an era when explicit content was circulated underground, and it remains in common use across South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, where it's often the preferred polite-ish euphemism for adult content. While younger Western audiences might use more explicit or internet-native terms, 'blue film' carries a certain retro discretion — speaking plainly about something explicit while keeping a layer of old-school indirectness.
- blue film78%
(slang, cinema, porn) a pornographic film.
- blue tape67%
British archaic slang for gin — part of a cluster of indirect terms for spirits used in 18th and 19th century slang. 'Blue' may reference the blue flame gin produces when burned, or its association with poverty and working-class drink culture. Now entirely obsolete; encountered only in historical slang dictionaries.
- blue fire67%
An older British slang phrase for lurid, melodramatic, or sensationalist writing — the kind of overwrought romanticism that prioritizes shock and spectacle over substance. Think purple prose cranked to eleven, gothic emotion, and theatrical excess. The term draws on the theatrical use of blue-colored flames for dramatic effect in nineteenth-century stage productions, where 'blue fire' created an eerie, supernatural atmosphere. Figuratively, it came to mean anything exaggerated for dramatic impact.