Meaning
Persistent ill feeling, resentment, or hostility between people or groups, especially after a quarrel or falling-out. Usually describes a standing grudge between two parties rather than a single flash of anger, and it is distinct from the literal medical sense of infected blood. Neutral to slightly journalistic; treats the hostility as ongoing rather than momentary. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The idiom rests on the old physiological belief that the condition of a person's blood governed their health and temperament, so that corrupted blood stood for anger and malice; that background is inference from the metaphor's logic. The documented record is firmer: the Oxford English Dictionary's public summary gives 1664, in a text titled 'Advice of Father', as its earliest evidence for the noun, and Merriam-Webster likewise lists 1664 as the first known use of the figurative sense, defining it as ill feeling. Merriam-Webster also records a separate literal medical sense, blood contaminated by a disease agent, which existed alongside the figurative one and survives in historical and veterinary writing.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- clear up the bad blood
- no bad blood
- stir up bad blood
- there is bad blood between them
Usage Examples
- There has been bad blood between the two studios ever since the royalty dispute.
- He insists there is no bad blood over the failed bid; the partners simply disagreed on timing.
- Community mediators were brought in to clear up decades of bad blood between the neighboring farms.