scream bloody murder

1. Angrily protest as loudly as possible, as in When Jimmy took her teddy bear, Lauren screamed bloody murder, or Residents are screaming bloody murder about the increase in property taxes. The scream here may be either literal (as in the first example) or figurative, which is also true of invoking murder as though one were in danger of being killed. Versions of this term, such as cry murder, date from the 1400s.

Example Sentences

Campus ideologues would scream bloody murder as the fiefdoms they have painstakingly constructed are dismantled, predictably appealing to the values they eradicated from campuses.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

"I thought this can't be right. It's not that I thought the trades were invalid or criminal in some way. It's just any country that has a billion Euros syphoned off it will scream bloody murder."

Read more on BBC

But “if you weigh in, someone is going to scream bloody murder that you wrote this a certain way to favor your perspective.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

“They knew if this happens, we were going to scream bloody murder,” Whatley said last year.

Read more on Seattle Times

I would have expected the right, which even defends violent terrorists' right to bear arms, to scream bloody murder that someone was charged for lying on a background check or required to give up their right to own a gun.

Read more on Salon

Related Words

• howl 
• peep 
• rasp 
• screech 
• shriek 
• squawk 
• wail 
• yelp