adj. (low).—An intensitive, difficult to define, and used in a multitude of vague and varying senses, but frequently with no special meaning, much less a sanguinary one: generally an emphatic very: in general colloquial use from 1650–1750, but now vulgar or profane: cf. FUCKING. [The origin is not quite certain; but there is good reason to think that it was at first a reference to the habits of the ‘BLOODS’ (q.v.) or aristocratic rowdies of the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th c. The phrase BLOODY DRUNK apparently ‘as drunk as a blood’ (cf. ‘AS DRUNK AS A LORD’); thence it was extended to kindred expressions, and at length to others; probably in later times, its associations with bloodshed and murder (cf. a ‘bloody’ battle, a ‘bloody’ butcher) have recommended it to the rough classes as a word that appeals to their imagination. Compare the prevalent craving for impressive or graphic intensitives as seen in the use of jolly, awfully, terribly, devilish, deuced, damned, ripping, rattling, thumping, stunning, thundering, etc.]: but see TIEDMAN, quot. 1868, with an eye on the early quotations and the probability of the Flanders campaigns influencing the introduction of the word in the modern colloquialism.
1676. ETHEREDGE, The Man of Mode i., 1, p. 186, ed. 1723.
| Dor. Give him half-a-crown. | |
| Med. Not without he will promise to be BLOODY drunk. |
1684. DRYDEN, Prol. Southerne’s Disappointment, line 59. The doughty bullies enter BLOODY drunk.
1706. FARQUHAR, The Recruiting Officer, iv., 1. Plume. Thou art a BLOODY impudent fellow. [There is no question of fighting in the context.]
1711. SWIFT, The Journal to Stella, 28 May, xxiv. It was BLOODY hot walking to-day.
1772. BRIDGES, A Burlesque Translation of Homer, 98.
| May soberly both drink and funk | |
| And soberly get BLOODY drunk. |
18[?]. Old Flash Song.
| How Jonah lived inside of a whale, | |
| ’Twas a BLOODY sight better than county gaol. |
1836. M. SCOTT, Tom Cringle’s Log, ii. ‘I’ve a BLOODY great mind to go down with him,’ stuttered another.
1840. R. H. DANA, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, ii., 2. You’ll find me a BLOODY rascal. Ibid., xx., 61. They’ve got a man for a mate of that ship, and not a BLOODY sheep about decks.
1868. G. A. SALA [Notes and Queries, 4 S. i.]. BLOODY … simply qualifies the superlative and excessive. Admiral Gambier, who is said to have introduced ‘tea and piety’ into the navy, discountenanced the practice … of d—g the sailors’ eyes while they were reefing topsails. His tars, scarcely grateful, nicknamed the admiral ‘Old BLOODY Politeful.’
1868. H. TIEDMAN [Notes and Queries], 4 S. i. It is noteworthy, that the German blutig is sometimes used in the same manner as the London BLOODY. While living in Dresden, I heard many times uttered such phrases as—‘Ich habe keinen blutigen Heller mehr,’ (I have no BLOODY penny or ‘red cent’ more), for ‘I have not a single penny left,’ etc. Was, then, the Dresden blutig introduced to the London mob in the shape of BLOODY? The Dutch bloedig may be used figuratively, just as the French sanglant.
1880. RUSKIN, Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 29. The use of the word BLOODY in modern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.
