A dated slang term for a pornographic film, common from the mid-20th century through the video era.
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.
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Slang from Black American Vernacular English (AAVE), hip-hop, drag and ballroom culture, the Caribbean, and NYC street vocabulary. The single largest source of new mainstream English slang in living memory.
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(slang, cinema, porn) a pornographic film.
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.
(vulgar, slang) A pornographic film.
(UK, slang, dated) Sensational romanticism.
Someone had slipped a blue movie into the VHS stack and nobody noticed until it was too late.
(slang, dated) a pornographic film.