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Bloody is a commonly used expletive attributive (intensifier) in the British English. It was used as an intensive since at least the 1670s. Considered "respectable" until about 1750, it was heavily tabooed during c. 1750–1920, considered equivalent to heavily obscene or profane speech. Public use continued to be seen as controversial until the 1960s, but since the later 20th century, the word has become a comparatively mild expletive or intensifier. The word is also used in the same way in Australian English and in other parts of the Commonwealth or in ex-Commonwealth countries, but it is not common in American English, and seen as a stereotypical marker of British English by American audiences. ==Origin== Use of the adjective ''bloody'' as a profane intensifier predates the 18th century. Its ultimate origin is unclear, and several hypotheses have been suggested. It may be a direct loan of Dutch ''bloote'', used "in the adverbial sense of entire, complete, pure, naked", which was suggested by Ker (1837) to have been "transformed into ''bloody'', in the consequently absurd phrases of ''bloody good'', ''bloody bad'', ''bloody thief'', ''bloody angry'', &c, where it simply implies completely, entirely, purely, very, truly, and has no relation to either blood or murder, except by corruption of the word."〔John Bellenden Ker, An Essay on the Archæology of our Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes, London:Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Co., 1837, pg 36.〕 The word "blood" in Dutch and German is used as part of minced oaths, in abbreviation of expressions referring to "God's blood", i.e. the Passion or the Eucharist. Ernest Weekley (1921) relates English usage to imitation of purely intensive use of Dutch ''bloed'' and German ''Blut'' in the early modern period. A popularly reported theory suggested euphemistic derivation from the phrase ''by Our Lady''. This possibility was discussed disapprovingly by Eric Partridge (1933). The contracted form ''by'r Lady'' is common in Shakespeare's plays around the turn of the 17th century, and interestingly Jonathan Swift about 100 years later writes both "it grows by'r Lady cold" and "it was bloody hot walking to-day"〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Journal to Stella, by Jonathan Swift : Letter 24 )〕 suggesting that ''bloody'' and ''by'r Lady'' had become exchangeable generic intensifiers. However, Partridge describes the supposed derivation of ''bloody'' as a further contraction of ''by'r lady'' as "phonetically implausible". According to ''Rawson's dictionary of Euphemisms'' (1995), attempts to derive ''bloody'' from minced oaths for "by our lady" or "God's blood" are based on the attempt to explain the word's extraordinary shock power in the 18th to 19th centuries, but they disregard that the earliest records of the word as an intensifier in the 17th to early 18th century do not reflect any taboo or profanity. It seems more likely, according to Rawson, that the taboo against the word arose secondarily, perhaps because of an association with menstruation.〔"More likely, the taboo stemmed from the fear that many people have of blood and, in the minds of some, from an association with menstrual bleeding. Whatever, the term was debarred from polite society during the whole of the nineteenth century." Rawson (1995).〕 Another theory is that the expression arose in connection with ''blood'' being used in slang for "an aristocrat", especially "rowdy young aristocrats", via expressions such as ''bloody drunk'' "as drunk as a blood".〔so Douglas Harper, etymonline.com〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「bloody」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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