Sanguined

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having a red or blood-like hue ; characterized by scenes or acts of bloodshed ; exhibiting a hopeful or confident attitude
2. Displaying the color or presence of blood ; involving or caused by violent bloodshed ; showing an optimistic or positive outlook
3. Appearing to contain blood or be blood-red ; associated with or resulting from violent events ; feeling upbeat and confident about outcomes

Etymology: The word's most surprising twist is that its cheerful sense comes from medicine. Ancient Hippocratic and later Galenic physicians held that the body contained four humours, and the one they called blood was linked with a warm, lively temperament. Someone with a surplus of it was thought to be cheerful, optimistic and spirited, so "sanguine" came to mean confident and hopeful long before it had anything to do with gore. The adjective traces back to Latin "sanguineus", meaning "of blood", formed from "sanguis" (blood) with suffixes that added the sense "of" or "relating to". It passed through Old French "sanguin" into Middle English, and "sanguineus" survives as a doublet of the English "sanguineous", which keeps the plain sense of bloody or blood-coloured. "Sanguined" is simply the past tense and past participle of the verb form, so it carries the same range of meanings: a thing that has been stained or flushed red, or a person who has been made hopeful or confident.