Bleeding

How to spell bleeding

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bleeding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bleeding mean?

1. adjectiveLosing blood, or marked by a flow of blood from a wound or injury.

Bleeding in a sentence

• The nurse pressed a clean cloth against the bleeding cut on his arm.

• A bleeding nose can usually be stopped by leaning forward and pinching the bridge.

Where does bleeding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the Old English verb blēdan, meaning 'to emit blood' or 'to lose blood', which was itself formed from blōd, the ancestor of modern 'blood'. The same Germanic root sits behind the German word bluten and the Dutch bloeden, all sharing the sense of blood flowing from a wound. The -ing ending is the ordinary English present participle, turning the verb into a form that can describe an ongoing action or act as an adjective. The spelling keeps the long 'ee' sound of bleed, since the silent final 'd' of the root is preserved before the suffix is added. In British informal speech the word also took on a second life as a mild intensifier, a softened oath comparable to 'bloody', a usage recorded since the nineteenth century.

How the word is built

• bleed (Old English blēdan: to lose blood)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)