Bloody

An expletive much used in the past four centuries, although its impact and currency in global varieties of English have varied considerably. It is common in British English, essential in Australian English, but rare in American English. In general it shows loss of intensity, having become a mere intensifier through overuse.

Discussions of the origins of bloody have been confused by a frequently retailed “folk etymology,” deriving the word from a corruption of “by our lady.” While this explanation is plausible phonetically, it is clearly not logical grammatically, since “by our lady” would not fit the adjectival function. (“By our lady hell!” would be a bizarre conjunction.) As is common with underground or slang usage, original written instances are difficult to trace. The OED cites an example from the Scots poet Gavin Douglas as far back as 1513, but most authorities trace the meaning much later. Samuel Pepys described the Fire of London in his Diary as “a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire” (September 2, 1666), while the playwright Thomas Otway uses the phrase “a bloody Cuckold-making scoundrel” in 1681 ( Works II, 137). The metaphorical connection with literal bloody seems to have started with the phrase “bloody drunk,” originally meaning “fired up and ready to shed blood,” still surviving in “bloody minded.” Samuel Johnson (1755) condemned “bloody drunk” as “very vulgar,” but Jonathan Swift used a very modern idiom in a letter to Stella: “It was bloody hot walking today” (May 8, 1711).

The Oxford English Dictionary entry for bloody (originally published in a fascicle or small volume in March 1887) makes some pointed comments on class usage:

In general colloquial use from the Restoration ¹⁶⁶⁰ to about 1750; 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, and usually printed in the newspapers (in police reports, etc.) as “b?y.”

In the same year, Gilbert and Sullivan’s new operetta Ruddygore was rapidly renamed Ruddigore . (This euphemistic practice was extended, generating forms like blooming, blinking , and ruddy , as well as the abbreviation of plain b, as in “The b thing won’t work.”) Professor H.C. Wyld in his History of Modern Colloquial English (1920) showed a similar attitude to that of the Oxford English Dictionary , but was more coy: “There is a certain adjective, most offensive to polite ears, which plays apparently the chief role in the vocabulary of large sections of the community.” In his Universal Dictionary of the English Language (1934) he was more explicit: “meaningless adjective much used among very low persons.” The novelist Nevil Shute recalled receiving in 1926 a pointed ultimatum from a publisher: “The House of Cassell does not print the word ‘bloody.’” The word was changed to ruddy and the novel ( Marazan ) duly appeared (Montagu 1973, 264).

In the colonial varieties of English, usage and impact have varied greatly. As the entry for Australia shows, bloody has always been highly current, reflecting the convict origins of the settlers. As Francis Grose noted in his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), bloody was “a favourite word used by thieves in swearing.” From the early years of the penal settlement, many observers commented on the extraordinarily prolific use of the word, so that for over a century it has been regarded as “the Australian adjective,” acquiring the institutional status of “the great Australian adjective” (A. Haskell, Waltzing Matilda 1940, 35). Its acceptability was certainly enhanced when it was popularized in a marching song during World War I called “the Australaise.” The printed version (written by J.C. Dennis) appeared with ironic omissions of the supposedly “unprintable” but obvious word:

Fellers of Australier
          Blokes an’ coves an’ coots
Shift yer?carcasses,
          Move yer?boots.

The chorus showed another interesting feature in the use of those swearwords that become familiarized or banalized:

Get a?move on,
          Have some?sense,
Learn the?art of
         Self de?fense.

The slang historian J.A. Farmer had noted in 1895 that bloody was “interlarded by every Cockney into every remark, suitably or unsuitably” (cited in Random House ). The practice has become very common: “Shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos at Tumba-bloody-Rumba” (1976, cited in the Australian National Dictionary ). The process, known as “infixing” shows that the epithet has lost semantic force and is being used simply as a makeweight for syncopation. Also a feature of American English, as H.L. Mencken noted many decades ago (1936, 315), it is discussed in the entry for flexibility.

Bloody continues to be the staple epithet of Australian English. As far back as 1942, a judge ruled in the Sydney Divorce Court that “the word bloody is so common in modern parlance that it is not regarded as swearing” (cited in Hornadge, 1980, 144). In 1970 a member of the House of Representatives announced to a wondering audience: “I never use the word ‘bloody’ because it is unparliamentary. It is a word I never bloody well use” (cited in Hornadge 1980, 145). The minister of transport was less reticent in his comments on a forthcoming budget in 1973: “There is going to be some bloody mammoth changes—some changes which the Budget will disclose. Bloody mammoth changes, that is the only way you can describe them. I think that Frank Crean has done a bloody good job standing up to the pace. Bloody oath, he has done a marvellous job in standing up to the pace” ( Sydney Morning Herald August 18, 1973, 2). The Australian National Dictionary defines it as “an intensive, ranging in force from ‘mildly irritating’ to ‘execrable.’”

In the United States, by contrast, bloody has never attracted the currency of Australia nor the opprobrium of the United Kingdom. Mencken observed in The American Language: “Perhaps the most curious disparity between the two tongues is presented by bloody . The word is entirely without improper significance in America, but in England it is regarded as indecent, with overtones of the blasphemous” (1936, 311-12). As the entry for Pygmalion shows, George Bernard Shaw’s provocative use of the term in his comedy in 1914 provoked a scandal in London, but had no impact in New York.

Bloody now has very different currencies and severity of impact in global varieties of English. It continues to have only limited use in the United States, being unlisted in most dictionaries of slang. In British and South African English it is now a mild and somewhat passé intensifier. “It’s a bloody good budget” commented Trevor Manuel, the South African minister of finance, on the front page of This Day (February 19, 2004). The usage raised no objection.