Blood

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /blʌd/

Definitions

1. A red liquid that flows through the veins and arteries of humans and animals, carrying oxygen and nutrients throughout the body
2. A vital fluid that circulates in the bodies of living beings, providing essential nutrients and oxygen while also playing a key role in the immune system and waste removal
3. A red substance responsible for transporting oxygen and nutrients to cells, facilitating bodily functions and aiding in the body's defense mechanisms

Etymology: The Old English "blōd" was a fairly ordinary word for a body fluid, but its ancestry points to something more striking: the Proto-Indo-European root that likely lies behind it meant "to swell," so the earliest sense of "blood" may have been "that which bursts out." That reconstruction is uncertain, but it suggests the word was named for the act of welling up from a wound rather than for the substance itself. The word is shared widely across Germanic languages. German has "Blut," Dutch "bloed," Swedish and Danish "blod," and Icelandic "blóð," and even the extinct Gothic had "blōþ." Crimean Gothic, a dialect spoken in Crimea into the early modern period, preserved "plut," showing the same root in a related form. The consistency across so many branches points to a very old shared word rather than a later borrowing.

Synonyms: hemoglobin, gore, sanguine fluid

Antonyms: plasma, serum