Blessed

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Wed Nov 29 14:34:01 UTC 2000


> > ... "Oh", she said, "I got blessed".
> > ... it meant she had got injured in a minor way. ...

>... the OED entry ...
>
>† bless, v.2 Obs. ...

>To wound, hurt; to beat, thrash, drub. ...

"Bless" in this sense is an old ENGLISH word (although right now I find it
only in the OED), so maybe it's no mystery that it occurs in the Anglophone
US and Caribbean. Apparently it's not quite as obsolete as the OED folks
think/thought. Or conceivably it was reintroduced from French (Montserrat
for example has had some French contact: apparently the island was even
taken [and held briefly] by the French three times in the 17th-18th centuries).

-- Doug Wilson



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