| English Dictionary |
BLOODLESS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
| IPA (US): |  |
Dictionary entry overview: What does bloodless mean?
• BLOODLESS (adjective)
The adjective BLOODLESS has 5 senses:
1. destitute of blood or apparently so
2. free from blood or bloodshed
3. without vigor or zest or energy
4. devoid of human emotion or feeling
5. anemic looking from illness or emotion
Familiarity information: BLOODLESS used as an adjective is common.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Destitute of blood or apparently so
Synonyms:
bloodless; exsanguine; exsanguinous
Context example:
the bloodless carcass of my Hector sold
Similar:
dead (no longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Free from blood or bloodshed
Context example:
a bloodless coup
Similar:
nonviolent; unbloody (achieved without bloodshed)
Antonym:
bloody (having or covered with or accompanied by blood)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Without vigor or zest or energy
Context example:
an insipid and bloodless young man
Similar:
spiritless (lacking ardor or vigor or energy)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Devoid of human emotion or feeling
Context example:
charts of bloodless economic indicators
Similar:
nonhuman (not human; not belonging to or produced by or appropriate to human beings)
Sense 5
Meaning:
Anemic looking from illness or emotion
Synonyms:
ashen; blanched; bloodless; livid; white
Context example:
a face white with rage
Similar:
colorless; colourless (weak in color; not colorful)
Context examples
A surgical procedure that uses the cutting power of a laser beam to make bloodless cuts in tissue or to remove a surface lesion such as a tumor.
(Laser surgery, NCI Dictionary)
The use of a laser either to vaporize surface lesions or to make bloodless cuts in tissue.
(Laser surgery, NCI Thesaurus)
His long, bloodless countenance was so thin and so white that it gave the strangest illusion of transparency.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
How very thin, and how very bloodless!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Everywhere I turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
She had lain back in her chair, with drooping eyelids and bloodless face, so that he had feared at first her journey had weighed heavily upon her, and that the strength was ebbing out of her.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I could easily see that she is somewhat bloodless, but I could not see the usual anæmic signs, and by a chance I was actually able to test the quality of her blood, for in opening a window which was stiff a cord gave way, and she cut her hand slightly with broken glass.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
It is probable that he imagined his crime to be a bloodless one, and hoped that if the body were consumed it would hide all traces of the method of his death—traces which, for some reason, must have pointed to him.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Her lips, too, were bloodless, but her eyes were flushed with crying.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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