Know Your English

When you say ‘Saif Ali Khan had blue blood running in his veins’, what you mean is that he was a person of noble birth; he came from a royal family. Our city’s blue bloods live in this area. The expression ‘blue blood’ is a translation of the Spanish ‘sangre azul’. For well over seven centuries (700 -1400), the Moors — people from the nomadic tribes in North Africa — ruled over much of Spain. The invaders were dark complexioned and during the seven centuries they ruled, interracial marriages were common. The aristocrats who lived in Castile, however, refused to have anything to do with the Moors; they did not allow their children to marry one. As a result, people in this area remained fair complexioned. Soon, they began to distinguish themselves from their rulers and fellow aristocrats by calling themselves “sangre azul”. What they meant by this was that because of their very fair complexion, the veins in their arms looked blue. It was as if blue blood was running through their veins.