blood on someone's head
- idiom
- Informal
:
sangre en las manos
- The judge said the defendant had blood on his head for the tragic accident.
Examples
-
She feared she'd have blood on her head if the risky operation failed.
-
If you don't warn them, any injury will be blood on your head.
-
If he dies, there will be blood on his head!
-
She believes there is blood on his head for the accident.
-
The manager insisted that any mistakes made during the project would be blood on his head.
-
After the serious accident, the driver felt that the blood on his head was overwhelming.
-
When the plan failed, she knew the blood on her head would be hard to bear.
Synonyms
22
8.9
Being responsible for someone dying or being seriously hurt because of your actions
15
9.9
Blame for doing something wrong, often in a legal context
A feeling of guilt for causing someone's death
Antonyms
How Responsible
- Informal
∞
2.3
1
6.5
∞
2.7
79
3.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the words 'blood' and 'on someone's head' individually evoke harm and location, the idiomatic meaning 'responsibility for someone else's misfortune or death' is not a straightforward compositional inference from those constituents. A B1 learner who knows the component words would most likely interpret a literal injury (blood physically on a head) rather than infer the metaphorical notion of culpability, so the expression is effectively idiomatic and unpredictable.
Etymology
The idiom blood on someone's head may come from old stories and the Bible where, if a person caused another's death, people said they had blood on their head as a sign of guilt. So the image of visible blood on the head made the phrase mean 'to be responsible' or 'to blame' for someone else's harm.