bad blood

[T]here was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks back, and we was only friends in the way of business.

1896, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 3, in Tom Sawyer, Detective

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, […].

1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

Evil runnin' through our brain / We and evil is about the same / Bad blood through our body flows / Where's the love, nobody knows

1973, Earth, Wind & Fire, “Evil”, in Head to the Sky

The former vice-president’s characterizations of peers such as Pete Buttigieg (talented but too gay for the America to accept as her running mate), and Josh Shapiro (an egoist) are not particularly juicy, but have already caused bad blood.

2025 September 22, Arwa Mahdawi, “107 Days by Kamala Harris review – no closure, no hope”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Now for these and other things (whereof I could tell a thousand) was the reckoning come that night; and not a line we missed of it; soon as our bad blood was up. I like not to tell of slaughter, though it might be of wolves and tigers; and that was a night of fire and slaughter, and of very long-harboured revenge. Enough that ere the daylight broke upon that wan March morning, the only Doones still left alive were the Counsellor and Carver.

1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter LXXI, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC

[I]f we dare not search ourselves close enough to discover the low breeding, the bad blood in us, it will one day come out plain as the smitten brand of the forcat.

1882, George MacDonald, chapter 4, in Weighed and Wanting

"Humph! Thought there was bad blood somewhere!" he exclaimed […]. "No!" was the determined answer […]. Because his father was dishonest is no proof that he is a thief."

1902, Annie Fellows Johnston, chapter 5, in Flip's ‘Islands of Providence’