Definition

1. Noun:
   • Indiscriminate slaughter; bloodshed: The act of killing many people, often in a violent and unrestrained manner.
   • A former medical treatment: The historical practice of withdrawing blood from a patient, believed in medieval and early modern medicine to cure or prevent illness by restoring a balance of the body's four humors.

Usage Examples

• Noun (Mass killing):
  • The political coup was followed by a period of brutal bloodletting.
  • Historians recorded the conflict as one of the worst bloodlettings of the century.
• Noun (Historical medicine):
  • Bloodletting was a common practice for treating fevers in the 18th century.
  • The doctor used leeches for bloodletting.

Advanced Usage

• Figurative Use: Used metaphorically to describe a severe reduction in personnel, funding, or resources within an organization.
  • The corporate restructuring involved a financial bloodletting, with budgets slashed across all departments.
• "Political/Partisan bloodletting": Refers to intense, often destructive, internal conflict within a political party or group.
  • After the election loss, the party engaged in a bitter internal bloodletting over its future direction.

Variants and Related Words

• Bloodlet (verb, archaic): To perform the medical procedure of bloodletting.
• Bloodletter (noun, historical): A person who performed bloodletting, such as a barber-surgeon.

Synonyms

• Slaughter: The killing of a large number of people or animals.
• Bloodbath: A savage and indiscriminate massacre.
• Carnage: The killing of a large number of people.
• Phlebotomy (specifically for the medical procedure): The surgical opening of a vein to draw blood.

Related Phrases

• Shed blood: To cause bloodshed; to wound or kill.
  • The revolution shed much blood before peace was restored.

Related Idioms

• Bleed someone dry/white: To take all of someone's money, often over a period of time. (Figuratively related to the exhaustive nature of bloodletting).
  • The corrupt officials bled the company dry.

Noun

1. indiscriminate slaughter
   • a bloodbath took place when the leaders of the plot surrendered
   • ten days after the bloodletting Hitler gave the action its name
   • the valley is no stranger to bloodshed and murder
   • a huge prison battue was ordered
2. formerly used as a treatment to reduce excess blood (one of the four humors of medieval medicine)