Blue cent

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>My dictionaries of slang have nothing to say about "blue cent",
>meaning an insignificant amount. Can anyone help with an origin
>and/or likely age?

I've never heard it myself AFAIK.

Here is an example attributed to Woody Guthrie, not explicitly dated but
supposedly pre-1979, from the Web:

<<But I still am glad I did fall heir to my chorea because it makes me stay
dizzy and drunk all the time without paying my bartender one little blue
cent.>>

"Blue cent" is found on the Internet several times, clearly equivalent to
the [far] more frequent and usual "red cent". Of course "red cent" means
"copper [or bronze] cent" [the standard US one-cent coin], and the "red" is
probably a simple intensifier, adding no information, probably analogous to
"thin" in "thin dime" ... although there were (long ago) "white cents",
one-cent coins made of white metal ('steel' one-cent coins issued during WW
II were not usually called "white" AFAIK).

I think a somewhat arbitrary adjective can serve as an intensifier in these
casual expressions, like "I didn't get a single solitary tiny little
f*cking red cent" or "he can kiss my big fat happy [choose skin colour]
arse". However, in some cases the adjective has some sense, as in "[I
didn't get a] plugged nickel" or "... bent farthing".

Conjectures:

(1) "Blue" referring to a copper cent which has been exposed to the
elements, or to acid, and which has turned blue/green: thus less
desirable/attractive than a shiny new cent. This possibility is supported
by the existence of "green cent" occasionally in the same sense (a few
Internet examples). This seems likely in US contexts from a few decades back.

(2) "Blue" = "counterfeit". This sense of "blue" (in "blue bit") is given
by Lighter (RHHDAS). [I suppose the original sense was "blue" = "(oxidized)
copper" as in (1) versus "red" = "gold".] This is pre-1800, though, so I
doubt its relevance.

(3) "Blue" euphemistic for "bloody". Partridge gives this with example "I
haven't a blue bean" = "I'm broke" from ca. 1910, supposedly obsolete by
1975 if I'm reading it right. This strikes me as a possibility, although
perhaps not natural for US uses. [I see a few South African examples of
"blue cent" on the Web.]

(4) Doubly-nonsense intensifier chosen simply as a color in opposition to
red: as in "I don't have a red cent; in fact, I don't even have a blue
cent; in fact, I don't have a cent of any sort!" The existence of "green
cent" occasionally in the same sense could support this possibility as well
as (1).

[NB: In Internet search, one will encounter -- in a certain role-playing
game -- a fantasy figure, apparently a type of orc, called a "cent": this
appears to be an abbreviation of "centurion", and they come in various
colors, blue, red, yellow, etc. I strongly doubt any relevance to the
current question.]

-- Doug Wilson