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Bad blood?

Reader question:

Please explain “bad blood” and this sentence – “I’m genuinely curious about the root cause of the bad blood between the two.”

My comments:

“Bad blood” simply means bad feeling, the hostility, and mutual hatred between the two persons involved. And “I” wonder what led to it in the beginning. “I” want to know the original cause of it.

Bad blood as a phrase means essentially bad relationships. Why is “blood” having anything to do with relationship? Perhaps you’re familiar with the term “blood relations”. That is family relations, relatives of the same family, members that share the same blood which runs through the same family through generations.

That’ll suffice, I hope, because “bad blood” usually suggests that the mutual hatred between people have been there for some time, the result of some argument or quarrel in the past. Think of family feuds, disputes between two families lasting generations. That’s a typical case of bad blood running loose. Indeed, some of these disputes are called “blood feuds” – suggesting, among other things, that these quarrels had often led to fights, resulting in a lot of spilled blood.

A WiseGeek.com explanation says this idiom originates in the 19th century (“With its origins in the early 19th century, the idea of bad blood is often associated with a breakdown in communication between members of a family unit”). I suspect that it may have a longer history than that, considering the fact the feuds between families or members of the same family have been as old as families and clans can remember.