Product Code Database
Bloody, as an adjective or adverb, is an expletive attributive commonly used in British English, Irish English, New Zealand English and Australian English; it is also present in Canadian English, Indian English, Malaysian/Singaporean English, Hawaiian English, South African English, Zimbabwean English, Kenyan English, and a number of other Commonwealth of nations. It has been used as an intensive since at least the 1670s.Sterfania Biscetti, "The diachronic development of bloody: a case study in historical pragmatics". In Richard Dury, Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena (eds.) English Historical Linguistics 2006 Volume 2: Lexical and semantic change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2008, p. 55. Considered respectable until about 1750, it was heavily tabooed during c. 1750–1920, considered equivalent to obscene or profane speech. Public use continued to be seen as controversial until the 1960s, but the word has since become a comparatively mild expletive or intensifier.
In American English, the word is used almost exclusively in its literal sense to describe something that is covered in blood; when used as an intensifier, it is seen by American audiences as a stereotypical marker of a British- or Irish-English speaker, without any significant obscene or profane connotations.
The word "blood" in Dutch and German is used as part of , in abbreviation of expressions referring to "God's blood", i.e. the Passion or the Eucharist. Ernest Weekley (1921) relates English usage to imitation of purely intensive use of Dutch bloed and German Blut in the early modern period.
Paradoxically, though, even though the word "bloody" has Germanic origins, its use as a swear word most likely entered English from the French, or, more specifically, the Anglo Norman language, the dialect of French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. According to Emily Reed (2018), "sanglant" (meaning "bloody") was used as an expletive in Anglo Norman, with published examples dating back to 1396. In that year, two examples of such insults appeared in Manières de langage, a medieval textbook for French-language learners. Subsequent publications (the French farce Pathelin and the Chronique de Charles VII) indicate that the word was commonly used as an insult in the Norman dialect of French spoken in England.Reed, Emily (March 15, 2018). " English swearing’s European origins," The Conversation. Accessed December 31, 2024.
A popularly reported theory suggested euphemistic derivation from the phrase by Our Lady. The contracted form by'r Lady is common in Shakespeare's plays around the turn of the 17th century, and Jonathan Swift about 100 years later writes both "it grows by'r Lady cold" and "it was bloody hot walking to-day" suggesting that bloody and by'r Lady had become exchangeable generic intensifiers. However, Eric Partridge (1933) describes the supposed derivation of bloody as a further contraction of by'r lady as "phonetically implausible".
According to Rawson's dictionary of Euphemisms (1995), attempts to derive bloody from minced oaths for "by our lady" or "God's blood" are based on the attempt to explain the word's extraordinary shock power in the 18th to 19th centuries, but they disregard that the earliest records of the word as an intensifier in the 17th to early 18th century do not reflect any taboo or profanity. It seems more likely, according to Rawson, that the taboo against the word arose secondarily, perhaps because of an association with menstruation."More likely, the taboo stemmed from the fear that many people have of blood and, in the minds of some, from an association with menstrual bleeding. Whatever, the term was debarred from polite society during the whole of the nineteenth century." Rawson (1995).
The Oxford English Dictionary mentions the theory that it may have arisen from aristocratic rowdies known as "bloods", hence "bloody drunk" means "drunk as a blood".
After about 1750 the word assumed more profanity connotations. Johnson (1755) already calls it "very vulgar", and the original Oxford English Dictionary article of 1888 comments the word is "now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered 'a horrid word', on a par with obscene or profane language".
On the opening night of George Bernard Shaw's comedy Pygmalion in 1914, Mrs Patrick Campbell, in the role of Eliza Doolittle, created a sensation with the line "Walk! Not bloody likely!" and this led to a fad for using "Pygmalion" itself as a pseudo-oath, as in "Not Pygmalion likely".
Publications such as newspapers, police reports, and so on may print b⸺y instead of the full profanity. A spoken language equivalent is blankety or, less frequently, blanked or blanky; the spoken words are all variations of blank, which, as a verbal representation of a dash, is used as a euphemism for a variety of "bad" words.
The expression "bloody hell" is now used as a general expression of surprise or as a general intensifier; e.g. "bloody hell" being used repeatedly in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001, PG Rating). In March 2006 Australia's national tourism commission, Tourism Australia, launched an advertising campaign targeted at potential visitors in several English-speaking countries. The ad sparked controversy because of its ending (in which a cheerful, bikini-clad spokeswoman delivers the ad's call-to-action by saying "...so where the bloody hell are you?"). In the UK the BACC required that a modified version of the ad be shown in the United Kingdom, without the word "bloody". In May 2006 the UK's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the word bloody was not an inappropriate marketing tool and the original version of the ad was permitted to air. In Canada, the ad's use of "bloody hell" also created controversy.
The longer "bloody hell-hounds" appears to have been at least printable in early 19th century Britain.so in London Theatre: A Collection of the Most Celebrated Dramatic Pieces, Correctly Given, from Copies Used in the Theatres Volumes 11-12 (1815), p. 59 "Bloody hell-hounds, I overheard you!" "Bloody hell's flames" as well as "bloody hell" is reported as a profanity supposedly used by Catholics against Protestants in 1845. John Ryan, Popery unmasked. A narrative of twenty years' Popish persecution (1845), p. 44.
|
|
