Bloody Beginnings

''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, and a number of other Commonwealth of nations. It has been used as an intensive since at least the 1670s. Considered respectable until about 1750, it was heavily tabooed during c. 1750–1920, considered equivalent to heavily 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. Canadian English usage is similar to American English, but use as an expletive adverb may be considered slightly vulgar depending on the circumstances.

Origin

Use of the adjective ''bloody'' as a profane intensifier predates the 18th century. Its ultimate origin is unclear, and several hypotheses have been suggested. It may be a direct loan of Dutch ''bloote'', (modern spelling blote) meaning ''entire'', ''complete'' or ''pure'', which was suggested by Ker (1837) to have been "transformed into ''bloody'', in the consequently absurd phrases of ''bloody good'', ''bloody bad'', ''bloody thief'', ''bloody angry'', etc., where it simply implies completely, entirely, purely, very, truly, and has no relation to either blood or murder, except by corruption of the word."

The word "blood" in Dutch and German is used as part of minced oaths, 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.

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.

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".

History of use

Until at least the early 18th century, the word was used innocuously. It was used as an intensifier without apparent implication of profanity by 18th-century authors such as Henry Fielding and Jonathan Swift ("It was bloody hot walking today" in 1713) and Samuel Richardson ("He is bloody passionate" in 1742).

After about 1750 the word assumed more profane 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".

Usage outside the UK

Australia/New Zealand

''Bloody'' has always been a very common part of Australian and New Zealand speech and has not been considered profane there for some time.. The word was dubbed "the Australian adjective" by '' The Bulletin'' on 18 August 1894. One Australian performer, Kevin Bloody Wilson, has even made it his middle name. Also in Australia, the word ''bloody'' is frequently used as a verbal hyphen, or infix, correctly called tmesis

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