bloody

   A frequent element in unfriendly and insulting vocative expressions of the ‘you bloody fool’ type. That particular expression occurred ten times in fifty novels chosen at random, though all were by British authors. The word would not be used in polite, formal circles. It has little meaning, but intensifies whatever else is being said. Eric Partridge has a 2000 word essay on the origin of the word, which was not offensive until the late eighteenth century. Swift was able to write to Stella in the Journal: ‘It was bloody hot walking today.’ Samuel Richardson, who would never have allowed a taboo word to soil his pages, says in Pamela (1742): ‘He is bloody passionate.’ ‘Bloody drunk’ was a frequently used phrase at one time, and probably meant ‘as drunk as a blood, i.e. one of the young aristocratic rowdies known as bloods.’ These seventeenth-century thugs were of good blood; they were also hotblooded. The Swift quotation is probably to be interpreted as a reference to the supposed heat of blood, while the Richardson remark reminds one of a hot-blooded lover. We still commonly hear people talking about something which makes their blood boil. It is easy to see how phrases like ‘bloody hot’, ‘bloody passionate’, and ‘bloody drunk’ led to the belief that ‘bloody’ meant ‘very’. But ‘blood’ to many speakers would have rather disgusting associations, and this seems to have been the sense transposed onto the word when used adjectivally.