| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| bleed |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  bl d |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: bled (bl d), bleed·ing, bleeds
| | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To emit or lose blood. 2. To be wounded, especially in battle. 3. To feel sympathetic grief or anguish: My heart bleeds for the victims of the air crash. 4. To exude a fluid such as sap. 5. To pay out money, especially an exorbitant amount. 6a. To run together or be diffused, as dyes in wet cloth. b. To undergo or be subject to such a diffusion of color: The madras skirt bled when it was first washed. 7. To show through a layer of paint, as a stain or resin in wood. 8. To be printed so as to go off the edge or edges of a page after trimming. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1a. To take or remove blood from. b. To extract sap or juice from. 2a. To draw liquid or gaseous contents from; drain. b. To draw off (liquid or gaseous matter) from a container. 3a. To obtain money from, especially by improper means. b. To drain of all valuable resources: “Politicians . . . never stop inventing illicit enterprises of government that bleed the national economy” (David A. Stockman). 4a. To cause (an illustration, for example) to bleed. b. To trim (a page, for example) so closely as to mutilate the printed or illustrative matter. | | NOUN: | 1. An instance of bleeding. 2. Illustrative matter that bleeds. 3a. A page trimmed so as to bleed. b. The part of the page that is trimmed off. | | PHRASAL VERB: | bleed off Aerospace To decrease: “Mike reared the chopper almost vertical to bleed off airspeed” (Robert Coram). | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English bleden, from Old English bldan. See bhel-3 in Appendix I.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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