Language Of Confusion: Bloody

In the spirit of the season, I’m going to look at words related to blood, which… are just wildly all over the place.
 
Blood comes from the Old English blod, which means… blood. Easy to follow so far. Before that, it’s from the Proto Germanic blodam, and that’s thought to be from the Proto Indo European bhlo-to-, to gush or spurt or burst out. That’s from the root bhel-, to thrive or bloom, which I’ve actually already looked at since it’s the source for flower and all words related to that. As for its verb form, that’s from the Old English bledan, to bleed. In Proto Germanic, it’s blodjan, so I guess that’s the reason it’s an irregular verb as it’s also from bhlo-to-.
 
Now things are going to start to get weird. Foil is actually related to blood. But not foil as in foiling someone’s plans, but foil like a thin sheet of metal—like tin foil. And also foil like in someone’s opposite. Really! Originally, gems were backed in metal foil to make them shine more, which started to metaphorically mean “enhancing another by contrast”, and now we have foil. A foil like a sword might also be related, which would make somewhat sense, but it also might be from the foiling someone’s plans foil, because words are so stupid. Anyway, it showed up in the early fourteenth century from the Old French foil/fueill/fueille, which meant foliage (another word I’ve already looked at), a sheet of paper, or a sheet of metal. It’s from the classical Latin folia, leaves. Because leaves are flat, we have tin foil and character foils.
 
And speaking of metal that’s somehow related to leaves, there’s also blade. It comes from the Old English blaed, a leaf or a blade. It’s from the Proto Germanic bladaz, from the Proto Indo European bhle-to- (an e instead of an o!), from bhel-. So originally, blade meant a leaf, before it started meaning a shoulder blade and the cutting part of a knife, and then sometime after that it started referring to a piece of grass. I already mentioned words are stupid, didn’t I?
 
Finally today is somehow the most and least baffling of all. Bless comes from the Old English bletsian/bledsian/bloedsian, to bless or consecrate. It’s from the Proto Germanic blodison and blotham, which means blood, because blood was originally sprinkled on pagan altars. Remember that the next time you say “Bless you!” when someone sneezes.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary