"So a random set of meanings has softly gathered around the word (blue) the way lint collects. The mind does that. A single word, a single thought, a single thing, as Plato taught. We cover our concepts, like fish, with clouds of net. Cops and bobbies were blue. We catch them and connect. Imagined origins reduce the sounds of clash and contradiction, as when one cries out blue murder in the street."
From On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry, William Gass, 1976.
On Being Blue is a beautiful object (blue cover, ivory vellum paper, generous margins, and Montotype Dante typeface.) This naughty little volume by a superior writer is accessible intellectual exercise on concepts of language and the interior mind.