I’ve worked for two British publishers.This probably has nothing to do with the fact that I lived in the United Kingdom for over three years, but the two situations have this in common: they’re bloody complicated.I say that for a reason.I’ve always wondered why “bloody” is considered swearing in Her Majesty’s realm, but not over here.Profanities tend to be culturally specific, of course, while some forms (scatological and blasphemous, in particular) are generally universals.I had always assumed “bloody” had something to do with religion, kind of like the more tame “zounds” is an abbreviated form of “God’s wounds.”In fact, the folk etymology of bloody suggests just that.Folk etymologies, I learned as a budding philologist many years ago, aren’t the same as scientific etymologies.In other words, like folklore, they aren’t entirely accurate.
One of the lessons I learned in Britain was that if you wish to cite a lexicon, it should be the Oxford English Dictionary.It’s The authority.So I thought I’d bloody well check it out on this.There, it turns out, the emphatic use of bloody has to do with breeding, not bleeding.Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were rowdy aristocrats, or “bloods,” that gave the phrase it’s referent.These privileged wealthy classes, as befitting the stereotype, could afford idle drink.They did not work, so life was a matter of passing the time with aristocratic pursuits, such as imbibing.This led to a phrase “blood drunk,” which, disappointingly, didn’t refer to Dracula, but meant drunk like a blood.It was only a short, tipsy walk to “bloody drunk.”
Antoine-Jean Duclos, from Wikimedia Commons
Disengaging the adjective—like the saucer part of the Enterprise pulling away from its iconic Star Trek hull—you get stand-alone “bloody.”This swear has nothing to do with sacred blood, but rather blue blood.Which brings us to the realm of sacre-bleu, in which the word “blue” (bleu) features.But this has nothing to do with the color blue (such as Marian blue, known from mythology of the virgin) but from the fact that bleu rhymes with dieu, and using the name of a deity (although “god” is actually a title, not a name) is swearing.In fact, it is technically what is meant by blasphemy.Working for British-based publishers has been its own kind of education.It’s easy to get lost in etymological labyrinths.But is that the bloody time?I’ve got to get to work.