out of the blue

Questions about out of the blue

What does out of the blue mean?

out of the blue means "not anticipated". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for out of the blue?

Close synonyms include unanticipated, unforeseen, unseen, unlooked-for, unexpectedly. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is out of the blue a common word?

out of the blue is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.