bleed
Americanverb (used without object)
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bleeds,
present (3rd person singular)
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bled,
past participle, past
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bleeding
present participle
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to lose blood from the vascular system, either internally into the body or externally through a natural orifice or break in the skin.
to bleed from the mouth.
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(of injured tissue, excrescences, etc.) to exude blood.
a wart that is bleeding.
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(of a plant) to exude sap, resin, etc., from a wound.
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(of dye or paint) to run or become diffused.
All the colors bled when the dress was washed.
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(of a liquid) to ooze or flow out.
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to feel pity, sorrow, or anguish.
My heart bleeds for you. A nation bleeds for its dead heroes.
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to suffer wounds or death, as in battle.
The soldiers bled for the cause.
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(of a broadcast signal) to interfere with another signal.
CB transmissions bleeding over into walkie-talkies.
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Printing. (of printed matter) to run off the edges of a page, either by design or through mutilation caused by too close trimming.
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Slang. to pay out money, as when overcharged or threatened with extortion.
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Metallurgy. (of a cooling ingot or casting) to have molten metal force its way through the solidified exterior because of internal gas pressure.
verb (used with object)
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bleeds,
present (3rd person singular)
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bled,
past participle, past
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bleeding
present participle
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to cause to lose blood, especially surgically.
Doctors no longer bleed their patients to reduce fever.
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to lose or emit (blood or sap).
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to drain or draw sap, water, electricity, etc., from (something).
to bleed a pipeline of excess air.
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to remove trapped air from (as an automotive brake system) by opening a bleeder valve.
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to obtain an excessive amount from; extort money from.
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Printing.
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to permit (printed illustrations or ornamentation) to run off the page or sheet.
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to trim the margin of (a book or sheet) so closely as to mutilate the text or illustration.
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noun
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Printing.
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a sheet or page margin trimmed so as to mutilate the text or illustration.
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a part thus trimmed off.
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Medicine/Medical. an instance of bleeding; hemorrhage.
an intracranial bleed.
adjective
verb phrase
idioms
verb
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(intr) to lose or emit blood
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(tr) to remove or draw blood from (a person or animal)
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(intr) to be injured or die, as for a cause or one's country
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(of plants) to exude (sap or resin), esp from a cut
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informal (tr) to obtain relatively large amounts of money, goods, etc, esp by extortion
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(tr) to draw liquid or gas from (a container or enclosed system)
to bleed the hydraulic brakes
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(intr) (of dye or paint) to run or become mixed, as when wet
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to print or be printed so that text, illustrations, etc, run off the trimmed page
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(tr) to trim (the edges of a printed sheet) so closely as to cut off some of the printed matter
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(intr) civil engineering building trades (of a mixture) to exude (a liquid) during compaction, such as water from cement
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to extort gradually all the resources of a person or thing
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used to express sympathetic grief, but often used ironically
noun
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printing
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an illustration or sheet trimmed so that some matter is bled
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( as modifier )
a bleed page
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printing the trimmings of a sheet that has been bled
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bleedsimple
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bleedssimple
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have bledperfect
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has bledperfect
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am bleedingprogressive
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are bleedingprogressive
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is bleedingprogressive
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have been bleedingperfect progressive
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has been bleedingperfect progressive
Past
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bledsimple
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had bledperfect
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was bleedingprogressive
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were bleedingprogressive
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had been bleedingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bleed
before 1000; Middle English bleden, Old English blēdan, derivative of blōd blood
Explanation
When you bleed, blood runs or oozes out of your body. Cutting your finger when you're chopping vegetables can make you bleed. Some kind of illness or injury, particularly one that cuts or scrapes your skin, can make you bleed. In long ago days of medical care, doctors would deliberately bleed patients to treat specific conditions, though today we mainly bleed due to accidents. You can also use bleed to mean "drain of money or resources," as when a greedy relative bleeds his wealthy grandmother, using her fortune to buy himself fancy cars.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“The commercial importance of diesel makes this rise particularly alarming, with more obvious potential for high diesel prices to bleed into broader inflation than for crude,” analysts at Wolfe Research said in a note Friday.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
Wild Bill and a fez-wearing bird-shop owner called Signor Ferrari have a scheme to bleed the Bacchanal and make it ripe for a takeover.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
He has also survived health scares, notably a fall in his bathroom in 2024 that caused a brain bleed.
From Barron's ● Aug. 2, 2026
The venue’s uppermost seats sit roughly 400 feet from the stage, and the surrounding residential neighborhoods make noise bleed a genuine concern.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026
And yet at the very same time he was happily engaged in using the new astronomy to predict the weather and to decide when doctors should bleed their patients.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Matthew Robert Cooper’s unnerving ambient score bleeds into the relentless dink-dink-dink of the Jeep’s strobing hazard lights.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
Authenticity bleeds into Brook's batting, for better and worse.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
The high doses raise risks of a side effect that can cause brain bleeds and swelling.
From Barron's ● Jun. 3, 2026
The curious light of gloaming makes the landscape alien to us as color bleeds slowly away.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
Five years feels like a lifetime when one day bleeds into the next, and your world doesn’t stretch any farther than the gray electric fence surrounding two miles of shoddy buildings and mud.
From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken
However, there is little evidence that the increase in energy costs has bled into second-round effects such as through wages.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
“It’s a national concern, it’s now a state concern, and now it’s bled into the local concern,” Hanford Mayor Mark Kairis said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026
For England, a winter of discontent has bled into the heat of the summer.
From BBC ● Jun. 26, 2026
And the losses have bled through to Asia, where tech-heavy Seoul and Tokyo -- which have led the region's surge this year -- sank from record highs.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
I talked until my tongue bled, my jaw gave out, and my throat swelled up in protest.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
However, people taking warfarin had a higher risk of major bleeding.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026
Microsoft isn’t at the bleeding edge of frontier model development, but the business is showing strength and leverages OpenAI’s frontier intellectual property, according to a July 29 report by Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
Artificial-intelligence stocks have stemmed the bleeding, after a selloff on Monday spurred by concerns that major model creators would start taking a more disciplined approach to AI development and spending.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026
The embryo grows until it causes the organ to rupture, triggering catastrophic bleeding.
From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026
But today the goo was bleeding through the lines where the sheets of metal came together.
From "I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919" by Lauren Tarshis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
