heart-blood

English

Alternative forms

• heart's blood

Etymology

From Middle English herte blood; equivalent to heart +‎ blood.

Noun

heart-blood (uncountable)

1. (literary, archaic) Blood needed for continued life; blood regarded as the seat of life; lifeblood.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     […] I am not your king / Till I be crown’d and that my sword be stain’d / With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster; […]

   • 1594 (first publication), Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page):

     What we haue done, / our hart bloud shall maintaine.

   • 1684, John Bunyan, Seasonable Counsel, or, Advice to Sufferers‎^[1], London: Benjamin Alsop, page 35:

     We shall not need here to call you to mind about the Massacres that were in Ireland, Paris, Piedmont, and other places: where the godly in the night, before they were well awake, had, some of them, their heart blood running on the ground.

   • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sixth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, pages 249–250:

     […] both his cheeks / Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose / The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into, / The faster for his love.