Dictionary

heart-blood en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English herte blood. By surface analysis, heart + blood.

Meanings

1. (archaic, literary, uncountable) Blood needed for continued life; blood regarded as the seat of life; lifeblood.
   • […] both his cheeks / Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose / The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into, / The faster for his love. 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sixth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, pages 249–250:
   • We shall not need here to call you to mind about the Massacres that were in Ireland, Paris, Piedmont, and other places: where the godly in the night, before they were well awake, had, some of them, their heart blood running on the ground. 1684, John Bunyan, Seasonable Counsel, or, Advice to Sufferers, London: Benjamin Alsop, page 35:
   • What we haue done, / our hart bloud shall maintaine. 1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
   • […] I am not your king / Till I be crown’d and that my sword be stain’d / With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster; […] 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

Forms