Definition

1. Verb:
   • To lose blood from one's body: To cause or experience the flow of blood from a wound or injury.
   • To kill violently: To cause the death of someone, especially in a brutal manner involving bloodshed.

Usage and Examples

• Verb (to lose blood):

  • The soldier shed blood for his country. (He was wounded and bled in service.)
  • In the accident, he shed a lot of blood and needed a transfusion.

• Verb (to kill violently):

  • The tyrant's regime shed the blood of innocent people. (The regime killed innocent people violently.)
  • Throughout history, many wars have been fought where both sides shed blood. (Both sides killed people violently.)

Advanced Usage

• "shed one's blood": Often used to emphasize personal sacrifice or injury.
  • He was willing to shed his own blood to protect his family.
• "shed the blood of [someone]": A formal or literary way to state that a person or group has killed someone.
  • The prophecy warned the king not to shed the blood of his own kin.

Variants and Related Words

• Bloodshed (n): The killing or wounding of people, typically on a large scale.
  • The negotiators hoped to avoid further bloodshed.
• Bloodletting (n): Literally, the historical practice of draining blood; figuratively, violent conflict or slaughter.
  • The political purge resulted in a terrible bloodletting.

Synonyms

• Bleed (v): To lose blood (for the first meaning).
• Slaughter (v): To kill (people or animals) in a cruel or violent way, typically in large numbers (for the second meaning).
• Spill blood (idiom): To wound or kill people.

Related Idioms and Phrases

• To shed blood, sweat, and tears: To work extremely hard and make great sacrifices for something.
  • Note: This is a related idiom but uses "shed" in a broader, figurative sense. The target phrase "shed blood" is its literal component.
• Blood is shed: A passive construction describing the occurrence of killing.
  • When blood is shed, it is hard to forgive and forget.

Verb

1. lose blood from one's body
2. kill violently
   • They will never stop shedding the blood of their enemies