blood

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The fluid consisting of plasma, blood cells, and platelets that is circulated by the heart through the vertebrate vascular system, carrying oxygen and nutrients to and waste materials away from all body tissues.
2. n. A functionally similar fluid in animals other than vertebrates.
3. n. The juice or sap of certain plants.
4. n. A vital or animating force; lifeblood.
5. n. One of the four humors of ancient and medieval physiology, identified with the blood found in blood vessels, and thought to cause cheerfulness.
6. n. Bloodshed; murder.
7. n. Temperament or disposition: a person of hot blood and fiery temper.
8. n. Descent from a common ancestor; parental lineage.
9. n. Family relationship; kinship.
10. n. Descent from noble or royal lineage: a princess of the blood.
11. n. Recorded descent from purebred stock.
12. n. National or racial ancestry.
13. n. A dandy.
14. v. To give (a hunting dog) its first taste of blood.
15. v. To subject (troops) to experience under fire: "The measure of an army is not known until it has been blooded” ( Tom Clancy).
16. v. To initiate by subjecting to an unpleasant or difficult experience.
17. idiom. bad blood Long-standing animosity.
18. idiom. in cold blood Deliberately, coldly, and dispassionately.
19. idiom. in (one's) blood So characteristic as to seem inherited or passed down by family tradition.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The fluid which circulates in the arteries and veins. From it the solid tissues take their food and oxygen, and into it they discharge their waste products. The blood is red in vertebrates, except amphioxus, and colorless, red, bluish, greenish, or milky in other animals. In passing through the lungs (see circulation) it is oxygenated and gives up carbon dioxid; then, after passing through the heart, it is carried as arterial blood by the arteries to the tissues; from the tissues it is returned to the heart through the veins, deprived of its nutrient properties, as venous blood. The venous blood of the Craniota is dark-red, the arterial bright-scarlet. The specific gravity of human blood in health is about 1.055. The blood consists of a fluid pale-yellow plasma and semi-solid corpuscles; the latter constitute between one third and one half of it; they are of two kinds, red and white. In a cubic millimeter of healthy human blood there are about 5,000,000 corpuscles, the red being to the white on the average about as 350 to 1. The red corpuscles are flat biconcave disks, non-nucleated and almost always round in mammals, and nucleated and almost always oval in other Craniota. Their diameter averages in man about 7.5 micromillimeters ( inch), while in Amphiuma tridactylum the longer diameter is 67.2 micromillimeters ( inch). Their color is due to hemoglobin, which constitutes about 90 per cent. of their dried substance. The white corpuscles are nucleated, slightly larger than the red in man, and exhibit active amœboid movements. Animal blood is used in clarifying sugar, in making animal charcoal, as a manure, and in many other ways.
2. n. . Blood that is shed; bloodshed; slaughter; murder.
3. n. The responsibility or guilt of shedding the blood of others.
4. n. From being popularly regarded as the fluid in which more especially the life resides, as the seat of feelings, passions, hereditary qualities, etc., the word blood has come to be used typically, or with certain associated ideas, in a number of different ways. Thus— The vital principle; life.
5. n. Fleshly nature; the carnal part of man, as opposed to the spiritual nature or divine life.
6. n. Temper of mind; natural disposition; high spirit; mettle; passion; anger: in this sense often accompanied with cold or warm, or other qualifying word. Thus, to commit an act in cold blood is to do it deliberately and without sudden passion. Hot or warm blood denotes a temper inflamed or irritated; to warm or heat the blood is to excite the passions.
7. n. A man of fire or spirit; a hot spark; a rake.
8. n. Persons of any specified race, nationality, or family, considered collectively.
9. n. Birth; extraction; parentage; breed; absolutely, high birth; good extraction: often qualified by such adjectives as good, base, etc.
10. n. One who inherits the blood of another; child; collectively, offspring; progeny.
11. n. Relationship by descent from a common ancestor; consanguinity; lineage; kindred; family.
12. n. That which resembles blood; the juice of anything, especially if red: as, “the blood of grapes,” Gen. xlix. 11.
13. n. A disease in cattle.
14. n. A commercial name for red coral.
15. n. Offspring; progeny; child or children: as, one's own flesh and blood should be preferred to strangers.
16. n. To be put to death.
17. To let blood from; bleed by opening a vein.
18. To stain with blood.
19. Hence To give a taste of blood; inure to the sight of blood.
20. To heat the blood of; excite; exasperate.
21. To victimize; extract money from (a person); bleed.
22. n. In animal-breeding, and by analogy in plant-breeding, the peculiar character of an individual conceived as transmissible.
23. In leather-coloring, to apply a coating of blood to, in order to obtain a good black.

Wiktionary

1. n. A vital liquid flowing in the bodies of many types of animals that usually conveys nutrients and oxygen. In vertebrates, it is colored red by hemoglobin, is conveyed by arteries and veins, is pumped by the heart and is usually generated in bone marrow.
2. n. A family relationship due to birth, such as that between siblings; contrasted with relationships due to marriage or adoption. (See blood relative, blood relation, by blood.)
3. n. medicine, countable A blood test or blood sample.
4. n. The sap or juice which flows in or from plants.
5. v. To cause something to be covered with blood; to bloody.
6. v. medicine, historical To let blood (from); to bleed.
7. v. To initiate into warfare or a blood sport.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The fluid which circulates in the principal vascular system of animals, carrying nourishment to all parts of the body, and bringing away waste products to be excreted. See under arterial.
2. n. Relationship by descent from a common ancestor; consanguinity; kinship.
3. n. Descent; lineage; especially, honorable birth; the highest royal lineage.
4. n. (Stock Breeding) Descent from parents of recognized breed; excellence or purity of breed.
5. n. The fleshy nature of man.
6. n. The shedding of blood; the taking of life, murder; manslaughter; destruction.
7. n. rare A bloodthirsty or murderous disposition.
8. n. Temper of mind; disposition; state of the passions; -- as if the blood were the seat of emotions.
9. n. A man of fire or spirit; a fiery spark; a gay, showy man; a rake.
10. n. The juice of anything, especially if red.
11. v. obsolete To bleed.
12. v. Archaic To stain, smear or wet, with blood.
13. v. To give (hounds or soldiers) a first taste or sight of blood, as in hunting or war.
14. v. obsolete To heat the blood of; to exasperate.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. smear with blood, as in a hunting initiation rite, where the face of a person is smeared with the blood of the kill
2. n. a dissolute man in fashionable society
3. n. temperament or disposition
4. n. people viewed as members of a group
5. n. the descendants of one individual
6. n. the fluid (red in vertebrates) that is pumped through the body by the heart and contains plasma, blood cells, and platelets