Confer amongst yourselves.

[mrissa]

I'm not really here, but I'm poking my head in with a question, and I'd appreciate it if you people had a coherent explanation sorted out by the time I get back. Okay? Okay, good. Here goes:

The British have "bloody" as a swear-word, right? And the Australians, so far as I am aware, also have "bloody." But here the only people who have it are people who are consciously trying to sound British, or else people who have been exposed to such a large mass of British literature, TV, movies, etc., that they end up sounding slightly British even if they're not trying. Most Americans do not register it as rude at all, not even as something their grandparents would have found rude but they themselves are unfazed by. It's just...not here.

And when I was a young adolescent and my parents and I were sorting out which things were vulgarities and which things were blasphemies, my mother explained that it comes from reference to God's blood, the wounds of Christ on the cross (see also "Zounds!"), etc. So it's certainly not that such a reference would not have occurred to the English-speakers who came to settle North America.

So what happened to "bloody"? Where did it go? Did they horde it in little ice caves up in Canada, or did it just never get here? And if not, why not? We kept all sorts of other good Anglo-Saxon swears. Why not this one?

Comments

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

I was told when I was in England that "bloody" was a reference to menstrual blood. But the guy who told me that was quite capable of yanking my chain, or just being wrong. I dunno.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

People can of course backform whatever they like, but every reference I've ever heard or read places "bloody" as yet another form of taking God's wounds in vein vain.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's fairly new?

We only seem to cling to archaic Engish, here.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

As a big fan of swear words, curses, oaths and imprecations, I've consistently run into a wall on this one. Like many of the Great Swears, the origins of bloody are lost in the murk of time. The God's Blood theory does not work, nor 'Blood of the royals' or 'menstrual blood'. None of them can be reliably affixed to bloody as a bloody bad thing to say.

I've come across sources that have claimed the British sometimes call it 'The Australian adjective (http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/goodgewt/poetry/greatozadjective.html)'. Apparently, there is a difference in amount of attached opprobrium for Aussies. I've never come across anything talking about the why, but my guess would be: prisoners. Lots and lots of prisoners. North America fell from the tree earlier and bloody may have been less in fashion. Plus our language has had more time to gnarl and grow into its own local variant.

It is useful to note that even completely incorrect etymologies of words can effect their usage. If the early American Colonials believed that bloody had something to do with the royalty, I can see it being kicked out.

Really though, I have no idea and it's a really bloody interesting question.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

That's what wikipedia said--it traced the profane useage (vs just sort of "that's not a nice word" useage) to 1750, and we may simply have gotten enough distance from the UK by then that it wouldn't have been as popular to ape their speece, as well by then the British might not have been be the top # of immigrants. (plus, do you think that the correspondence from england would really include people using any sort of profanity? It's one thing to send a hate email, but it's an awful lot of work to send a real letter by ship just to swear at someone.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Just to swear at someone, no, not at all. But "Dear James, The weather continues bloody awful here," does not seem outside the pale.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I think it may depend on how profane the term was considered at the time. But now I'm wondering. I mean, I could certainly write a letter to a friend today saying "The weather's been shit lately," which is about the level that bloody is now, but was it then?

oh, for some primary sources.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I knew vices had countries of purported origin, though I'm still sorting out which one is The West Swabian Vice etc. I didn't know it applied to adjectives, too!

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I am guessing it comes from the origin. According to this article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A753527) "bloody" came from a corruption of "By Your Lady", which is a religious blasphemy.

Consider the founders of the English presence in America. They were extremely conservative Protestant sects. I would guess that the would find "Bloody" to be religiously verboten as well as socially rude, and so would not have used it.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

This is my understanding on the origins of "bloody" as well.

I suspect that "By Our Lady" being a specifically Catholic/Anglican blasphemy (given that it's a reference to the Virgin Mary) may also have had something to do with its lack of adoption in US.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, on further consideration it does seem more likely to be related to the eventual dominance of non-Anglican protestant sects in this country rather than reticence on the part of the very first settlers.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

No. While the settlers in New England were mostly members of strict Protestant sects, Maryland was settled mostly by Catholics and the rest of the South mostly by people who didn't care all that much about religion. Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers, who were strict in different ways.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like we use "Zounds" all that much either. (outside of comic books)

The wikipedia has some interesting stuff in it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody

but it doesn't really explain it either, except that it looks like it became really profane after the US and the UK would have started to drift apart (1750), so it may have been a distancing 'choice' in dialect at the time? And then just slipped out almost all together. Because it does have a point that we *do* use "bloody murder" over here without blinking, so it's not the use, just the use-as-profanity that we missed.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that "bloody murder" is relevant. I mean, murder frequently is bloody, in a totally non-swearing related, physical way.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I picked up my usage of it in Kenya, so I can say that it's common there (used to be a Colony).

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Seems to me we still have it as a modifier -- "bloody awful day", "scream bloody murder", "bloody hell" as an ejaculation, and such things. Not ubiquitous, but not strange either. Or maybe that's a reintroduction via Monty Python -- "'e's bleeding deceased!"

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

To my southern US ear, 'bloody awful' or any 'bloody /adjective/' seems British. 'Scream bloody murder' seems USian, if a bit old-fashioned.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"Bleeding" as opposed to "bloody" sounds very specifically Northside Dublin to me.

[ "Doctor, Doctor, help me, I'm all covered in blood !"
"Where are you bleeding from, then ?"
"Finglas !" ]

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heehee.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

It sort of works in text, but it's better with the accent. Unlike the difference between a buffalo and a bison, which only works with an Ulster accent.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Is it that a bison is where an Australian washes his face? That's the one I heard.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I've never heard "bloody hell" except from the mouths of Mriss' list above (Brits, poseurs, and the over-exposed).

And I still think bloody murder is just because murder tends to, you know, get blood everywhere.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

My exposure & adoption of bloody certainly come from Monty Python, I'm pretty sure that language was not used in the Dr Who series, which was my other early exposure to merry old England.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So, just for the record: you are in category two, due to not just books, movies, and TV, but also to actual relatives.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would be category two on your original pair, though not on songwind's more recent triplet. Although I'm not yet quite over-exposed enough to be deferred from blood donation, and I don't remember my father (who was born in England, for those following along at home) using "bloody" (and my father was out of England before highschool, and spent time in Canada, Germany, and finally the US).

[kaffrithe.livejournal.com]

the US, as it worked to create it's own image, spent a lot of effort being not-British (no monarchy/aristocracy, no mix of church & state, a marked preference for Protestantism over Catholicism, the whole tea thing...). I'm inclined to believe that vocabulary followed suit.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; Britain hasn't been Catholic since, oh, about 1558, has it? (But the monarchy/aristocracy issue seems to have been a BIG deal in US thought early on.) England didn't get tea until 1650, and it was expensive and for the upper classes only at first, so I think the US interest in tea was more independent, not so much derived from British habit.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Just listening with interest.

I was thinking that Gazooks and Zounds fell into cartoon and comic-book parlance. Sound-effect curses. Because we don't take them seriously here, do we?

But things like "S'blood!" keep poking at me inconclusively. =shrugs= I'm probably mixing time periods rather a lot.

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Gadzooks!" and "Zounds!" are blasphemies that came here but got milded out (as I believe they did in England). They're the sort of thing that old-fashioned characters would say in American novels of the Progressive Era, and from there, the cartoons. Which makes me wonder if cartoons will be saying, "Oh, for the love of Pete!" in a few decades, or whether that's too regional.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Colonial speach is more conservative than the speech of the father country, so my guess would be that the usage of "bloody" as a swear word emerged after the colonization of the Americas, and that it never caught on here. I am told by reliable sources (linguistic anthropologists) that modern American accent and usage are more similar to the English of the 16th and 17th centuries than is modern English accent and usage. This would explain Australia as well, since Australia was colonized later. Possibly after "bloody" became a popular swear word.

I, too, have been told it is a reference to the blood of Christ. Most Americans don't take the blood of Christ seriously enough to "get" this, but it is rather shocking if you look at it that way.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

We kept it. All ours ahahahaha.

I even say "zounds!" every once in a while.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

We did?

I wasn't sure if that was just the British half of my family acting up. *g*

Woo! Bloody bloody!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Damn hell ass kings!

Ahem. Sorry.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

No, I do not need to write a mockumentary about the rise and fall of the Southern rock band of that name, even if I did immediately envision Johnny Knoxville as their lead vocalist.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

"Bloody" was slain during the general slaughter during the Great Superfluous-'U's-and-'E's-Pogrom-And-Purge of 1815. This has long been thought suspicious, since in fact "bloody" has neither a 'u' nor an 'e' even in the original Cockney, but, as with the spare 'i' in "aluminum" and the entire word "zed," no charges have ever been filed.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Was this before or after poking out the -ise?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

During, and in the midst of. Also, Ow. Poking of -ise, very painful.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

I like to say "bloody." I love swearing in British. You can swear, and yet get away with it in this country. (Kinda like Spike flipping the British bird in the Buffy credits.)

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows Americans are never offended by bloody violence.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I don't have a useful thing to say (as if that has ever stopped me 8-o but I have found one pitfall with the phrase. I do say "bloody", being one of the over-exposed category - and I'm a few time I did manage to shock people (such as the nice older Irish man I used to work with, who has been in the US since the year I was born into it) who took it as a much stronger swear than I'd intended. (I use the stronger US swearwords fairly often, but try not to at work or around small children. I think he'd have categorized "bloody" in with those.)

OED usage

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

'Bloody' as an adjective:
10. a. In foul language, a vague epithet expressing anger, resentment, detestation; but often a mere intensive, esp. with a negative, as ‘not a bloody one’. [Prob. from the adv. use in its later phase.]

The first recorded use is "1785 Fifth Session Old Bailey May 722/1 The prisoner Fennell swore an oath, if he had a knife he would cut his bloody fingers off." Of course, this sense of the word would probably have been in use in speech before this date.

The adverbial use is interesting:
2. As an intensive: Very....and no mistake, exceedingly; abominably, desperately. In general colloquial use from the Restoration to c 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.) “by”’. N.E.D. Also in tmesis.
[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’ or aristocratic rowdies of the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th c. The phrase ‘bloody drunk’ was 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. We may compare the prevalent craving for impressive or graphic intensives, seen in the use of jolly, awfully, terribly, devilish, deuced, damned, ripping, rattling, thumping, stunning, thundering, etc. There is no ground for the notion that ‘bloody’, offensive as from associations it now is to ears polite, contains any profane allusion or has connexion with the oath ‘'s blood!’] (Bold formatting mine - the OED's webpage sets that passage as a note, in a small font)

I had heard the By-Our-Lady -> By'r'lady -> Bloody etymology as well, but haven't seen anything confirming it.

Re: OED usage

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add that the first recorded usage of the adverb is from 1676: G. ETHEREGE Man of Mode I. i. (1684) 9 Not without he will promise to be bloody drunk.

And apologies for the huge block of bold above. I hadn't realised that the note was so long.

Re: OED usage

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No problem, and thanks.

Re: OED usage

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I also found out along the way that the first recorded example of the word 'tmesis' (i.e. that rhetorical thing where you put a word inside another word, like 'abso-bloody-lutely', to use a pertinent example in case anyone hadn't come across it) is from 1586. The example used by Day* is "What might be soeuer...for, whatsoeuer might be, etc."

*Day, Angel The English secretorie 1586

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

There's also a subtle difference in how you can use "bloody" for shades of emphasis compared to other intensifiers; or at least, the distinction between "a great bloody hole", which is principally annoying or notable because it's a hole, and "a bloody great hole", which is principally annoying or notable because of its large size, is not one I've seen outside my own strand of English.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That makes sense to me, and I would be able to pick out that there was a difference, though I'm not sure I'd be able to articulate what it was.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the love of Mike, what silly people.