bloody-mindednessn.

1638 J. Underhill Newes from Amer. 23 One Master..went ashore, not suspecting the bloody-mindednesse of those persons, who fell upon him.

1690 Statutes at Large S. Carolina (1840) VII. 346 If any one out of wilfulness, wantoness, or bloody mindedness, shall kill a slave, he or she..shall suffer three months imprisonment.

1731 N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. (ed. 2) II. at Saturnalia The priests of Saturn were initiated in scarlet robes, to express their bloody-mindedness.

1759 Mod. Part Universal Hist. V. vii. v. 477 It may be observed, as a farther proof of relating to the bloody-mindedness of this shah, that..this cruel prince..ordered their eyes to be dug out of their heads.

1789 G. Vassa Life I. v. 218 By the 329th Act, page 125, of the Assembly of Barbadoes, it is enacted ‘That..if any man shall out of wantonness, or only of bloody-mindedness..wilfully kill a negro..he shall pay into the public treasury fifteen pounds sterling’.

1822 T. Carlyle Let. July (1886) II. 108 The persecution of the Albigenses has little to distinguish it from other persecutions..except a darker tinge of bloody-mindedness.

1870 J. R. Lowell My Study Windows 214 What a difference between the straight-forward bloody-mindedness of Orestes and the metaphysical punctiliousness of the Dane.

1906 H. N. Brailsford Macedonia Pref. xi There is little to choose in bloody-mindedness between any of the Balkan races—they are all what centuries of Asiatic rule have made them.

1963 H. S. Ferns in Brit. Jrnl. Sociol. 14 384/1 In my experience, the behaviour of farm children is characterized by more violence, sadism, vandalism, vice and bloody-mindedness than the behaviour of city children.

2006 B. M. Jenkins Unconquerable nation iii. 100 Zarqawi..became the ‘Sheikh of the Slaughterers’ in recognition of his bloody-mindedness, which caused even jihadists to wince.

1910 Daily Chron. 15 Mar. 6/7 Sparrows..do not eat the flowerets of the larch, but merely peck them off out of sheer devilry and ‘bloodymindedness’.

1953 R. Lehmann Echoing Grove 69 They all agreed, too monstrous, your bloody-mindedness, insufferable rudeness to me.

1982 Times 5 July 11/6 Man's..striving constantly to impose order on chaos..is undermined by..human foible and fallibility, not to mention simple bloody-mindedness.

2002 B. Hoey Her Majesty vi. 84 That he [sc. Prince Philip] managed to get anything at all done is a tribute to his determination—and in many cases, his sheer bloody-mindedness.