On bloody mary drink Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This article is about the word used as an intensifier.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Look up bloody in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Use of the adjective bloody as a profane intensifier predates the 18th century. Its ultimate origin is unclear, and several hypotheses have been suggested. The word “blood” in Dutch and German is used as part of minced oaths, in abbreviation of expressions referring to “God’s blood”, i. A popularly reported theory suggested euphemistic derivation from the phrase by Our Lady.

The Oxford English Dictionary prefers the theory that it arose from aristocratic rowdies known as “bloods”, hence “bloody drunk” means “drunk as a blood”. Until at least the early 18th century, the word was used innocuously. After about 1750 the word assumed more profane connotations. On the opening night of George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Pygmalion in 1914, Mrs Patrick Campbell, in the role of Eliza Doolittle, created a sensation with the line “Walk!

Pygmalion” itself as a pseudo-oath, as in “Not Pygmalion likely”. Bloody has always been a very common part of Australian speech and has not been considered profane there for some time. The word was dubbed “the Australian adjective” by The Bulletin on 18 August 1894. The word as an expletive is seldom used in the United States of America. In the US the term is usually used when the intention is to mimic an Englishman. The term bloody as an intensifier is now overall fairly rare in Canada.