Meaning
Completely loyal and steadfast, never wavering in allegiance; a true-blue supporter stays with a team, party or cause through everything. In British politics it has a specific colour sense too, blue being the Conservative Party's colour, so a 'true blue' is also a committed Conservative. Admiring when praising loyalty; in British political shorthand it can simply mean Conservative. Regional use: General English; especially British English.
Origin
The traditional account, repeated from at least the seventeenth century, is that blue cloth woven and dyed with woad in Coventry was so colourfast that 'as true as Coventry blue' became a byword for permanence, and 'true blue' for a person who does not change or fade. Wikipedia's Coventry blue article endorses the story, citing local history scholarship such as Hulton's 'True as Coventry Blue' (1995), and notes the dye recipe was lost after the Puritan suppression of the trade's wedding-favour customs in 1649-60. It must be flagged honestly: this derivation is a tradition handed down through proverb books and antiquarian writing rather than something demonstrable from contemporary medieval dyers' records, and The Phrase Finder dismisses rival stories (the Virgin Mary's blue, Spanish blue blood, butchers' aprons) for lack of evidence. What is firmly documented is Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1663), 'Twas Presbyterian true blue', alluding to the blue-wearing Scottish Presbyterians, and John Ray's Compleat Collection of English Proverbs (1670), glossing true blue as one 'that was always the same and like himself'. The Tory colour sense is later still.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- as true as Coventry blue
- true blue through and through
- true-blue (attributive)
Usage Examples
- Her grandfather was true blue, following the party even in its worst election years.
- He remains a true-blue supporter of the club, home and away for forty seasons.
- The mayor is true blue through and through, so the levee funding plea went nowhere.