Word.ws English Dictionary

wave the bloody shirt

wave the bloody shirt verb: to mention the fallen and wars (especially the American Civil War) in an effort to draw empathy.

Verb

wave the bloody shirt (third-person singular simple present waves the bloody shirt, present participle waving the bloody shirt, simple past and past participle waved the bloody shirt)

  1. (US, slang) To mention the fallen and wars (especially the American Civil War) in an effort to draw empathy.

Forms of wave the bloody shirt

third-person singular presentwaves the bloody shirt
present participlewaving the bloody shirt
past participlewaved the bloody shirt
pastwaved the bloody shirt

Questions about wave the bloody shirt

What does wave the bloody shirt mean?
Wave the bloody shirt means to mention the fallen and wars (especially the American Civil War) in an effort to draw empathy.
What part of speech is wave the bloody shirt?
Wave the bloody shirt is a verb.
What is the past tense of wave the bloody shirt?
The past tense of wave the bloody shirt is waved the bloody shirt.

Words near wave the bloody shirt in the dictionary

  1. wave scroll
  2. wave scrolls
  3. wave shoaling
  4. wave ski
  5. wave skis
  6. wave the bloody shirt
  7. wave the white flag
  8. wave theory
  9. wave through
  10. wave train
  11. wave trains

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wave the bloody shirt (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-wave the bloody shirt.ogg.

Cite this entry: “wave the bloody shirt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wave_the_bloody_shirt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.