bloodless
bloodless adjective: lacking blood; ashen, anaemic.
Adjective
bloodless (comparative more bloodless, superlative most bloodless)
- Lacking blood; ashen, anaemic.
- My bloodleſſe bodie waxeth chill and colde,
And with my blood my life ſlides through my wound,
My ſoule begins to take her flight to hell,
And ſummones all my ſences to depart: […]c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC... - Thou dost not slumber: see, thy two sons’ heads,
Thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here:
Thy other banish’d son, with this dear sight
Struck pale and bloodless; and thy brother, I,
Even like a stony image, cold and numb.c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
- My bloodleſſe bodie waxeth chill and colde,
- Taking place without loss of blood.
- a bloodless conquest; a bloodless coup d'état; a bloodless revolution; a bloodless victory
- Now and then a gaudy peacock would run from his shelter in the lauhala trees, but no wild boars came out, so we returned from our raid bloodless and spoilless.1892, Rev. Herbert Henry Gowen, The Paradise of the Pacific, page 129
- Lacking emotion, passion or vivacity.
- Those Philharmonic subscribers who considered Guest Conductor Igor Stravinsky too bloodless and ascetic […] last week found his successor, Georges Enesco, more to their taste.1937 February 8, “No. 1 Rumanian”, in Time
- Many of them are leaving us — the words. Gone into hiding […] Now they lurk, uncaged, behind other words, behind trending, brittle, bloodless little wokeisms […]2024, Bruce Wagner, The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers
bloodless meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
bloodless in Urdu
- بےدرد, بےہمت, مردار, مردہ
bloodless in Bengali
- lacking blood
- রক্তহীন roktohin
- taking place without loss of blood
- রক্তপাতহীন roktopatohin
bloodless in Malayalam
- non-violent, peaceful, peaceable
- രക്തരഹിത, രക്തച്ചൊരിച്ചിലില്ലാത്ത, ചോരചിന്താത്ത, അക്രമരഹിതമായ, സമാധാനപരമായ, സമാധാനപൂർണ്ണമായ
- anaemic, pale, wan
- രക്തമില്ലാത്ത, രക്തക്കുറവുള്ള, ചോരയില്ലാത്ത, ചോരമയമില്ലാത്ത, വിളറിയ, വെളുത്ത
- ruthless, heartless, unfeeling
- നിർവികാരനായ, ഹൃദയശൂന്യനായ, കഠിനഹൃദയനായ, ലാലാടിക, ക്രൂരതയുള്ള, ക്രൂരനായ
- lifeless, feeble, spiritless
- ജീവനില്ലാത്ത, ദുർബ്ബല, നിർവീര്യമായ, ഉത്സാഹമില്ലാത്ത, മന്ദോദ്യമ, ആവേശമില്ലാത്ത
bloodless in Kannada
- ನೆತ್ತರಿಲ್ಲದ, ರಕ್ತಹೀನ, ಪೇಲವ, ಬಿಳಿಚಿದ, ರಕ್ತಪಾತವಿಲ್ಲದ, ರಕ್ತರಹಿತ
More languagesFewer languages
- bloodless in Sanskrit
- रक्तहीन raktahīna
Examples of bloodless in a sentence
- The face was white and thoroughly bloodless with some kind of foundation cream; it stank of powder and a gardenia-like perfume.1956, James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, Penguin, published 2001, Part One, Chapter 2:
- There is plenty of commentary, even among users of other platforms, about how Threads is bloodless (and owned by Mark Zuckerberg), Mastodon is inscrutable, and Bluesky is humorless.2025 May 23, Charlie Warzel, “What Are People Still Doing on X?”, in The Atlantic:
Forms of bloodless
| comparative | more bloodless |
|---|---|
| superlative | most bloodless |
| alternative form (obsolete) | bloodlesse |
| alternative form (obsolete) | bloudless |
Origin of bloodless
From Middle English blodles, from Old English blōdlēas (“bloodless”). Cognate with Dutch bloedeloos (“bloodless”), German blutlos (“bloodless”), Danish blodløs (“bloodless”), Swedish blodlös (“bloodless”), Icelandic blóðlaus (“bloodless”). By surface analysis, blood + -less.
Words formed from bloodless
Phrases with bloodless
Questions about bloodless
- What does bloodless mean?
- Bloodless means lacking blood; ashen, anaemic.
- What is bloodless in Urdu?
- Bloodless in Urdu is بےدرد, بےہمت, مردار. See Bloodless meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use bloodless in a sentence?
- The face was white and thoroughly bloodless with some kind of foundation cream; it stank of powder and a gardenia-like perfume.
- What part of speech is bloodless?
- Bloodless is an adjective.
Words near bloodless in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bloodless (page history and authors); bloodless (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bloodless (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bloodless (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); रक्तहीन (Sanskrit) (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bloodless.wav.
Cite this entry: “bloodless.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bloodless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.