let blood
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]let blood (third-person singular simple present lets blood, present participle letting blood, simple past and past participle let blood)
- (transitive, now archaic or historical) To extract blood from (a person, part of the body etc.). [from 9th c.]
- c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
- Is the foole sicke […] Alacke, let it blood.
- 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 84, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume III, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:
- The Swiss […] let him blood immediately, without hesitation, being always provided with a case of lancets, against all accidents on the road.
- (intransitive, now archaic or historical) To bleed someone; to extract blood from a person, part of the body etc. for supposed therapeutic purposes, especially by phlebotomy. [from 10th c.]
- (figurative) To make (someone or something) bleed, in a general sense; to cut; to kill. [from 13th c.]