bless. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

bless

PRONUNCIATION:	bls
TRANSITIVE VERB:	Inflected forms: blessed or blest ( blst), bless·ing, bless·es 1. To make holy by religious rite; sanctify. 2. To make the sign of the cross over so as to sanctify. 3. To invoke divine favor upon. 4. To honor as holy; glorify: Bless the Lord. 5. To confer well-being or prosperity on. 6. To endow, as with talent.
IDIOM:	bless you Used to wish good health to a person who has just sneezed.
ETYMOLOGY:	Middle English blessen, from Old English bltsian, to consecrate. See bhel-³ in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS:	blesser —NOUN
WORD HISTORY:	The verb bless comes from Old English bldsian, bldsian, bltsian, “to bless, wish happiness, consecrate.” Although the Old English verb has no cognates in any other Germanic language, it can be shown to derive from the Germanic noun bldan, “blood.” Bldsian* therefore literally means “to consecrate with blood, sprinkle with blood.” The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, the early Germanic migrants to Britain, used bldsian for their pagan sacrifices. After they converted to Christianity, bldsian acquired new meanings as a result of its use in translations of the Latin Bible, but it kept its pagan Germanic senses as well.


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.