Bleed

How to spell bleed

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bleed

What does bleed mean?

1. verbTo lose blood from the body through a wound or injury.
2. verbOf a colour, dye, or ink, to spread or seep beyond its intended boundary.
3. verbTo draw off trapped air or fluid from a system such as a radiator or brake line.

Bleed in a sentence

• A deep cut on the hand can bleed for several minutes.

• Cheap dye can bleed into the white sleeves during the first wash.

• You should bleed the radiator to clear the trapped air before winter.

• The nurse warned that the wound might bleed again overnight.

• The ink began to bleed across the damp paper.

• The mechanic had to bleed the brake lines to restore the pedal pressure.

Where does bleed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word that comes from the Old English verb blēdan, meaning 'to emit blood', which was formed directly from blōd, the Old English word for 'blood'. It traces back to the reconstructed Proto-Germanic blōþijan, and it has close cousins in other Germanic languages, such as the Dutch bloeden and the German bluten, all of which carry the same sense of losing blood. The vowel you hear and spell today, the long 'ee' written as 'ee', is the result of centuries of sound change acting on the original Old English vowel, which is also why the noun 'blood' and the verb 'bleed' look so different despite being the same family. Over time English extended the word well beyond wounds: ink can bleed across paper, colours can bleed when fabric is washed, and engineers bleed air or fluid from a system. The steady double 'e' spelling is the main thing to fix in memory, since the word never doubles its consonants or drops a letter.

How the word is built

• bleed (from Old English blēdan, derived from blōd 'blood')