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Bloody-Minded
Bloody-Minded
Bloody-Minded : Phrases
Meaning:
Tiresome, stubborn and obstructive.
Origin:
There's an earlier meaning, which is now rarely used, which is simply 'intent upon blood and warfare'. The earliest citation of this is in Richard Greene's Gwydonius, 1584:
"I will neither bee so bloudie minded as to breede thy bane."
Shakespeare also used it in King Henry VI:
SUFFOLK:
Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.
A cunning man did calculate my birth
And told me that by water I should die:
Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded;
Thy name is Gaultier, being rightly sounded.EDWARD:
Now breathe we, lords: good fortune bids us pause,
And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks.
Some troops pursue the bloody-minded queen,
That led calm Henry, though he were a king,
As doth a sail, fill'd with a fretting gust,
Command an argosy to stem the waves.
But think you, lords, that Clifford fled with them?
Our present use of the phrase is much more recent - 20th century in fact, as here from James Agate, in The Sunday Times, March 1934:
"A man says to a presumed lady, 'What a bloody-minded woman you are!'"