bad blood

From Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia (1823).

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bad blood (uncountable)

1. Feelings of hostility or ill will.

   Synonyms: animosity, animus

   • 1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter III, in Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC:

     The government at home, and the people of the colonies, are getting to have bad blood between them.

   • 1896, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 3, in Tom Sawyer, Detective:

     [T]here was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks back, and we was only friends in the way of business.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, […] .

   • 2025 September 22, Arwa Mahdawi, “107 Days by Kamala Harris review – no closure, no hope”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     The former vice-president’s characterizations of peers such as Pete Buttigieg (talented but too gay for the America to accept as her running mate), and Josh Shapiro (an egoist) are not particularly juicy, but have already caused bad blood.

2. A serious feud or long-standing grudge.

   Synonyms: blood feud, vendetta

   • 1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter LXXI, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC:

     Now for these and other things (whereof I could tell a thousand) was the reckoning come that night; and not a line we missed of it; soon as our bad blood was up. I like not to tell of slaughter, though it might be of wolves and tigers; and that was a night of fire and slaughter, and of very long-harboured revenge. Enough that ere the daylight broke upon that wan March morning, the only Doones still left alive were the Counsellor and Carver.

3. (dated) An inherited immoral or disturbed nature.
   • 1882, George MacDonald, chapter 4, in Weighed and Wanting:

     [I]f we dare not search ourselves close enough to discover the low breeding, the bad blood in us, it will one day come out plain as the smitten brand of the forcat.

   • 1902, Annie Fellows Johnston, chapter 5, in Flip's ‘Islands of Providence’:

     "Humph! Thought there was bad blood somewhere!" he exclaimed […] .
     "No!" was the determined answer […] . Because his father was dishonest is no proof that he is a thief."

   • 1921, Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton, chapter 6, in The Sisters-In-Law:

     She has bad blood in her. Her mother […] went to pieces, poor dear, and Judge Lawton wisely sent her East.

4. (regional) A particular disease; in some places, syphilis.