Have you ever heard the idiom ‘out of the blue’? It means something happens suddenly and surprisingly. It’s used when something unexpected occurs without any warning. It’s often used after the verb ‘come’ or ‘come completely’.
Here are some examples
The news that they were getting married came completely out of the blue.
I hadn’t heard from my old school friend in years, and then out of the blue, she called me yesterday!
The forecast for the storm came out of the blue, so we didn’t have time to prepare.
Out the of blue, my boss asked me to move to the London office.
Continued below
Continued from above
Be careful, don’t forget to use the article ‘the’ with this idiom.
INCORRECT: It came out of blue.
CORRECT: It came out of the blue.
One way to remember this idiom is to imagine you’re standing under a beautiful blue sky in nice weather and then lightning suddenly strikes.
You can also say ‘a bolt from the blue’ or ‘a bolt out of the blue’. The meaning is the same as ‘out of the blue’. But in this case, the idiom is often used after ‘as’ or ‘like’.
Here are some examples:
The news that the president was resigning came like a bolt from the blue.
The Corona pandemic came as a bolt from the blue in 2020.
Extra information The large-scale corpus data below on ‘out of the blue’ suggests it is a relatively common idiom used across a range of English-speaking countries. |
So, when did you last get some news out of the blue? 😉
Related links
What does ‘get cold feet’ mean?
What does ‘play it by ear’ mean?