Etymology

God bless you

Today it means: May God bless you; said as a short prayer, benediction, or valediction for the recipient; usually religiously; sometimes nonliterally but rhetorically or culturally. Full definition →

Middle English God blesse you
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited fromGod blesse you
  2. English todayGod bless you

From Middle English God blesse you, God blisse you. A clause in the present subjunctive inherited intact from a time when English was freely productive of it. Diachronically it is not a shortening; synchronically it is often surface-analyzed as such; present-day English has a heavy need for the modal auxiliary (may) to ensure syntactic clarity, whereas earlier English could more easily drop it.

Words from the same roots

Middle EnglishGod blesse you all →

bless you

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.