bad blood

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

bad blood

1. (Sens figuré ) Animosité, sentiment d'hostilité, malfaisance.
   • 1843, James Fenimore Cooper, Wyandotte, ch. 3:

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

   • 1896, Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective, ch. 3:

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

   • Modèle:RQ:Joyce Ulysses, Episode 16:

     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,...

2. (Sens figuré ) Querelle, rancune, vendetta.
   • 1869, R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, ch. 71:

     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. (Sens figuré ) (Vieilli ) Nature immorale ou perturbée.
   • 1882, George MacDonald, Weighed and Wanting, ch. 4:

     [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, Flip's ‘Islands of Providence’, ch. 5:

     "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, The Sisters-In-Law, ch. 6:

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

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