sweat blood
Idioms-
Also, sweat one's guts out . Work diligently or strenuously, as in The men were sweating blood to finish the roof before the storm hit . The phrase using guts was first used about 1890, and that with blood shortly thereafter.
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Suffer mental anguish, worry intensely, as in Waiting for the test results, I was sweating blood . This usage was first recorded in a work by D.H. Lawrence in 1924. Both usages are colloquial, and allude to the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44): “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
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.
Ebola spreads through touching sweat, blood and other bodily fluids of infected people.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
“It was personal for everybody,” Briesewitz says, “so people gave it their sweat, blood and tears — everything.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2023
And it was only made possible thanks to the sweat, blood and tears of several generations of scientists and engineers.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 6, 2021
“We went to Mexico,” she recalled in an interview cited by Reuters news agency, “determined to sweat blood to defeat the invaders’ representatives.”
From Washington Post ● Aug. 31, 2016
My sheets and shift were soaked through with sweat, blood, and the foul-smelling black substance that marked a victim of yellow fever.
From "Fever 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson
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.
