| 释义 |
ˌbloody-ˈmindedness
[f. prec. + -ness.]
1. Inclination to bloodshed; bloodthirstiness, cruelty.
1789G. Vassa Life I. v. 218 By the 329th Act, page 125, of the Assembly of Barbadoes, it is enacted ‘That..if any man shall out of wantonness, or only of bloody-mindedness..wilfully kill a negro..he shall pay into the public treasury fifteen pounds sterling’. 1822Carlyle Let. July (1886) II. 108 The persecution of the Albigenses has little to distinguish it from other persecutions..except a darker tinge of bloody-mindedness. 1870Lowell Study Wind. 214 What a difference between the straight-forward bloody-mindedness of Orestes and the metaphysical punctiliousness of the Dane.
2. Perversity, contrariness, cantankerousness.
1910Daily Chron. 15 Mar. 6/7 Sparrows..do not eat the flowerets of the larch, but merely peck them off out of sheer devilry and ‘bloodymindedness’. 1953R. Lehmann Echoing Grove 69 They all agreed, too monstrous, your bloody-mindedness, insufferable rudeness to me. 1959Spectator 19 June 875/1 We can only hope that the intransigence so far shown by both sides [in the printing dispute] will not develop into bloody-mindedness, as such disputes sometimes do. |