Talk:bloodynoun

Century lemmatizes the alt form bloodnoun, which however seems to be so much rarer that it may not even meet CFI. I can find one citation:

• 2000, Jeffery Deaver, The Empty Chair: A Novel (→ISBN), page 119:

  You sit here at night, listen to the cicada and the bloodnouns—you know, the bullfrogs.

There is also this citation of unlcear meaning:

• 1894, Robert Blatchford, A Son of the Forge, page 84:

  […] but kape up yere pecker, an' if mesilf an' owld Blood 'n Ouns can assist yez the ivil a fear but we're the boys to thry.

This is the general exclamation:

• 1891, The Dear Little Shamrock, in Reilly's 400 / Judge's Library: A Monthly Magazine of Fun, number 24, page 24:

  An' shure, whin 'tis shpied by th' Amerikin aigle,

  Blood'nouns! but he'll choke himself scraitchin' the brogue.

As to the geographic distribution there are these references:

• Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms (2000, →ISBN), page 24: bloodnoun A bullfrog, chiefly in South Carolina. Also heard as bloody-noun.
• 1894 Transactions of the American Philological Association: A curious survival of this phrase appears in the name blood-nouns, sometimes bloody-nouns, applied by boys in the city of Washington some years ago, and I dare say now, to bull-frogs.

- -sche (discuss) 02:57, 5 July 2015 (UTC)