Word.ws English Dictionary

bloodhound

/ˈblʌd.haʊnd/

bloodhound noun: a large scenthound famed for its ability to follow a scent many days old, over vast distances. This dog is often used as a police dog to track missing people, fleeing suspects, or escaped prisoners.

bloodhound: a large scenthound famed for its ability to follow a scent many days old, over vast distances. This...
Image: Mary Bloom, American Kennel Club, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bloodhound (plural bloodhounds)

  1. A large scenthound famed for its ability to follow a scent many days old, over vast distances. This dog is often used as a police dog to track missing people, fleeing suspects, or escaped prisoners.
    • Someone stole our bloodhounds, but we got the backup bloodhounds to chase the first tier of bloodhounds.2007, Xavier: Renegade Angel, season 1, episode 4, spoken by Police Officer
  2. (figuratively, informal) A detective or other person skilled at finding people or clues.
  3. (archaic) A bloodthirsty person.
    • For now the despot’s blood-hounds with their prey,
      Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep
      Their gluttony of death; the loose array
      Of horsemen o’er the wide fields murdering sweep,
      And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap
      A harvest sown with other hopes; […]1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, →OCLC...

bloodhound meaning in Tamil, Kannada, Malay and Persian

bloodhound in Tamil

வேட்டைநாய்

bloodhound in Kannada

ಬೇಟೆನಾಯಿ, ತುಬ್ಬುನಾಯಿ

bloodhound in Malay

dog
anjing pemburu darah

bloodhound in Persian

dog
سگ شکاری سنت اوبر

Forms of bloodhound

pluralbloodhounds
alternative formblood-hound
alternative formbloudhound
alternative formbloud-hound

Plural of bloodhound: bloodhounds

Origin of bloodhound

Inherited from Middle English blodhound, blodhond; equivalent to blood + hound. Cognate with Dutch bloedhond (“bloodhound”), Middle Low German blōthunt (“bloodhound”), German Bluthund (“bloodhound”), Danish blodhund (“bloodhound”), Swedish blodhund (“bloodhound”). The detective sense follows from the dog's ability to follow a trail.

Words formed from bloodhound

Questions about bloodhound

What does bloodhound mean?
Bloodhound means a large scenthound famed for its ability to follow a scent many days old, over vast distances. This dog is often used as a police dog to track missing people, fleeing suspects, or escaped prisoners.
What is bloodhound in Tamil?
Bloodhound in Tamil is வேட்டைநாய். See Bloodhound meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bloodhound?
Bloodhound is a noun.
How do you pronounce bloodhound?
Bloodhound is pronounced /ˈblʌd.haʊnd/ (UK).
What is the plural of bloodhound?
The plural of bloodhound is bloodhounds.

Words near bloodhound in the dictionary

  1. bloodheads
  2. bloodheat
  3. bloodhorn
  4. bloodhorse
  5. bloodhorses
  6. bloodhound
  7. bloodhounding
  8. bloodhoundish
  9. bloodhounds
  10. bloodhouse
  11. bloodhouses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bloodhound (page history and authors); bloodhound (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bloodhound (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bloodhound.wav.

Cite this entry: “bloodhound.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bloodhound. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.