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say it: BLUHD-let-ing
bloodletting is a noun meaning "formerly used as a treatment to reduce excess blood (one of the four humors of medieval medicine)". It carries 2 recorded senses.
formerly used as a treatment to reduce excess blood (one of the four humors of medieval medicine)
Middle Ages · medicine
indiscriminate slaughter
“a bloodbath took place when the leaders of the plot surrendered”
“ten days after the bloodletting Hitler gave the action its name”
“the valley is no stranger to bloodshed and murder”
“a huge prison battue was ordered”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for bloodletting come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.