From what I understand if you had 'blue blood' you were considered to be from 'Royal blood'...surely technically we all have 'blue blood', it becomes red only when our skin is cut...and the blood is exposed , oxygen turns the blood red....am I right here?
2007-04-18 22:17:59 · 5 answers · asked by angelina jolie2 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
Blood is red, whether oxygenated or not. The difference between arterial blood (oxygenated) and venal blood is the hue of the red. The presence of oxygen alters the red hue, making it brighter. Conversely, the absence of it in venal blood makes it of a darker shade of red.
To answer your question about royalty having "blue blood", this comes from the colour of their skin. Back when this term was coined, it was seen as elegant and aristocratic to have a skin as pale as possible as tan was associated with farmers, who worked outside. Therefore, aristocrats would keep themselves indoors as much as possible, and protect themselves from the sun when stepping outside (remember seeing in movies all those ladies going around with little "umbrellas"?). The milky white complexion they maintained made their blood vessels more visible on the surface of the skin, and as I'm sure you probably noticed in very fair skinned people, the blood vessels, when apparent on the skin surface, appear to be of a bluish tone - hence the term "blue blood".
Hope this helps! :)
2007-04-18 23:14:17 · answer #1 · answered by pink_panther_7737337 2 · 4⤊ 0⤋
Blood is red when it runs in our veins. The idea that it is blue must come from the fact that the veins you can see through the skin look blue. But, that is not the color of the blood.
Maybe the idea of blue blood being royal blood comes from the way veins look, especially as a person gets older and the skin gets thinner. It's easy to imagine old royalty sitting on a throne with prominent veins looking down on the hard working younger peasants.
2007-04-19 02:07:03 · answer #2 · answered by Joan H 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Though this expression has been used in English since the early 1800s, it actually comes from an older Spanish saying. Old, aristocratic Spanish families used to boast that their skin was fairly light because they had not intermarried with the darker - skinned Moors. The Spaniards' veins showed through their skins as visibly blue in color. If their skin was darker because they had intermarried, the blood would not appear so blue. Blue blood is a translation of the Spanish words sangre azul. Today anyone can be called a blue blood if he or she is of noble birth, a member of hight society, and so on.
2007-04-18 22:53:30 · answer #3 · answered by Jonathan V 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The Spanish once had the notion that the veins in the skin of men and women of aristocratic families were bluer than those of other persons.
2007-04-18 22:28:55 · answer #4 · answered by Choqs 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No. Blood is dark red when deoxygenated, and bright red when oxygenated.
2007-04-18 22:20:55 · answer #5 · answered by Al_ide 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋