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bloody

adjectiveadverbverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • India//ˈblɜ.ɖiː//
  • //ˈblʌ.di//
  • //ˈblɪ.diː//

Covered in blood.

adjective

  1. 1

    Covered in blood.

    All that remained of his right hand after the accident was a bloody stump.

    And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall, / Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.

    O Antony! Begge not your death of vs: / Though now we muſt appeare bloody and cruell, / As by our hands, and this our preſent Acte / You ſee we do: Yet ſee you but our hands, / And this, the bleeding buſineſſe they haue done:

  2. 2

    Characterised by bloodshed.

    There have been bloody battles between the two tribes.

    Some bloody paſſion ſhakes your very Frame:

    I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation.

    The story of Elizabeth Bathory is one of the bloodiest in history.

  3. 3

    informalUsed as an intensifier.

    Traffic in central London was a bloody mess this morning.

    There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.

    Try to keep those bloody women's bloody heads on their bloody shoulders by somehow helping them make this whole mad impossible scheme actually work.

    You are not to go asking anyone about who killed that bloody dog.

  4. 4

    datedBadly behaved; unpleasant; beastly.

    Come to apologize to Charles. I was bloody to him and he's my guest. He's my guest and my only friend and I was bloody to him.

Etymology

From Middle English blody, blodi, from Old English blōdiġ, blōdeġ (“bloody”), from Proto-West Germanic *blōdag, from Proto-Germanic *blōþagaz (“bloody”), equivalent to blood + -y. Cognate with Saterland Frisian bläidich, blöidig, blouderch (“bloody”), West Frisian bloedich (“bloody”), Dutch bloedig (“bloody”), German Low German blödig (“bloody”), German blutig (“bloody”), Danish blodig (“bloody”), Swedish blodig (“bloody”), Faroese blóðigur (“bloody”), Icelandic blóðugur (“bloody”). See Wikipedia for thoughts on sense evolution.

adverb

  1. 1

    informalUsed to express anger, annoyance, or shock, or for emphasis.

    Walk! Not bloody likely. [Sensation]. I am going in a taxi. [She goes out].

    "Dice are no bloody good," David said.

verb

  1. 1

    To stain with blood.

    The butcher often bloodied his apron in the course of his work.

  2. 2

    To draw blood from (one's opponent) in a fight.

  3. 3

    To demonstrably harm (the cause of an opponent).

Etymology

From Middle English *blodien, *blodegen (attested as blodeke, bi-blodgi), from Old English blōdgian, blōdegian (“to bloody, make bloody”), from Proto-West Germanic *blōdagōn (“to make bloody”), from Proto-Germanic *blōþagōną (“to make bloody”). Cognate with Middle High German bluotigen (“to make bloody”), Swedish blodga (“to make bloody”), Icelandic blóðga (“to bloody”).

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of bloody maryinformalEllipsis of bloody mary.

Etymology

Clipping of bloody mary.

Forms

plural
bloodies
comparative
bloodier, more bloody
superlative
bloodiest, most bloody
past tense
bloodied
past participle
bloodied
present participle
bloodying
third person singular
bloodies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).