Bad blood

noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 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. 2
    a feeling of ill will arousing active hostility wordnet
  3. 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. 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. 5
    A particular disease; in some places, syphilis. regional, uncountable

Etymology

From Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia (1823).

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