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Bad blood
Definitions
- 1 Feelings of hostility or ill will. uncountable
"The government at home, and the people of the colonies, are getting to have bad blood between them."
- 2 a feeling of ill will arousing active hostility wordnet
- 3 A serious feud or long-standing grudge. uncountable
"Now for these and other things (whereof I could tell a thousand) was the reckoning come that night; and not a line we missed of it; soon as our bad blood was up. I like not to tell of slaughter, though it might be of wolves and tigers; and that was a night of fire and slaughter, and of very long-harboured revenge. Enough that ere the daylight broke upon that wan March morning, the only Doones still left alive were the Counsellor and Carver."
- 4 An inherited immoral or disturbed nature. dated, uncountable
"[I]f we dare not search ourselves close enough to discover the low breeding, the bad blood in us, it will one day come out plain as the smitten brand of the forcat."
- 5 A particular disease; in some places, syphilis. regional, uncountable
Etymology
From Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia (1823).
See also for "bad blood"
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