Word.ws English Dictionary

blood in the water

blood in the water noun: in a competitive situation, the exhibition of apparent weakness or vulnerability by one party, especially when this leads to a feeling of vulnerability or greater pressure to perform on the part of the weak party, or enhanced expectation of victory by the others.

blood in the water: in a competitive situation, the exhibition of apparent weakness or vulnerability by one party,...
Image: Greg Schechter from San Francisco, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

blood in the water (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) In a competitive situation, the exhibition of apparent weakness or vulnerability by one party, especially when this leads to a feeling of vulnerability or greater pressure to perform on the part of the weak party, or enhanced expectation of victory by the others.
    • The first reason Powell gave to explain Carter's press miseries was the idea of "blood in the water"—that more bad press goes to those who have just had bad press. Almost nobody in main-stream politics is as likely as a fourth-year incumbent to have just come off a stint of bad press.1983, Michael J. Robinson, Margaret A. Sheehan, Over the Wire and on TV
    • But Justice won the Intuit round, and now Microsoft-baiters want to block deployment of the Microsoft Network. As a recent article in the Wall Street Journal aptly noted, competitors sense blood in the water.1995 May 29, John Gallant, Network World
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: the result of a marine predator's attack.

Synonyms of blood in the water

Origin of blood in the water

Referring to the emergence of predators such as sharks (and possible feeding frenzy) when blood is spilled in the water.

Questions about blood in the water

What does blood in the water mean?
Blood in the water means in a competitive situation, the exhibition of apparent weakness or vulnerability by one party, especially when this leads to a feeling of vulnerability or greater pressure to perform on the part of the weak party, or enhanced expectation of victory by the others.
What part of speech is blood in the water?
Blood in the water is a noun.

Words near blood in the water in the dictionary

  1. blood groups
  2. blood horse
  3. blood horses
  4. blood in
  5. blood in one's eye
  6. blood in the water
  7. blood is thicker than water
  8. blood jelly
  9. blood kind
  10. blood kinds
  11. blood knot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blood in the water (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-blood in the water.ogg.

Cite this entry: “blood in the water.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blood_in_the_water. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.