I was drawn to the word, “blood-dimmed tragedy” in the following statement of Maureen Dowd’s article titled, “Peeping Barry” in June 8 New York Times:
You could see the fear in his eyes, the fear that froze him in place,
after Andy Card whispered to W. in that Florida classroom that a
second plane had crashed into the twin towers. The blood-dimmed
tragedy of 9/11 was chilling. But instead of rising above the fear, W.
let it overwhelm his better instincts.
I know ‘blood-chilling’ and ‘blood-curdling’. But as I don’t know the word, “blood-dimmed,” I consulted English dictionaries at hand and online. None of OED, CED and Merriam-Webster includes this word and nor does Google Ngram register any incidence of “blood-dimmed.”
However, I found that “blood-dimmed tragedy” is a twist of “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” in William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;"
I wonder why Dowd – I know she loves flowery expressions – doesn’t plainly say ‘the tragedy of 9/11 was blood-chilling / curdling’ instead of ‘the blood-dimmed tragedy of 9/11 was chilling.”
How does the word “blood-dimmed,” which I cannot find in any of mainstream English dictionaries, pass current among average English speaking people? Will I be frowned on, or not, if I say “I saw a blood-dimmed car accident in my neighborhood yesterday” to my English speaking friend?
Best Answer
You'd probably raise some eyebrows if you used blood-dimmed in normal conversation. It's not at all a common usage, and I'd hazard a guess that even most native speakers wouldn't be too clear on the exact meaning (it's dimmed = made dim, dark, akin to rivers dark with blood).
I also doubt most people would recognise the allusion to Yeats’ poem, but it certainly seems to me most references to blood-dimmed in Google Books are followed by the word tide, and do in fact stem directly from “The Second Coming”.
In this case I think it's probably fair to say Dowd is aiming more for a sense of "scholarly erudition" than "flowery language". She probably knows most of her readers won't pick up on the reference, but she assumes the few that do will admire her for using it (and themselves for "getting it").