"bless someone's heart" meaning in All languages combined

See bless someone's heart on Wiktionary

Phrase [English]

Etymology: A conventional shortening of a wish May God bless (your/her/his/etc) heart. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} bless someone's heart
  1. Used to express gratitude. (Compare bless you, God bless you.) Synonyms (expression of gratitude): bless you
    Sense id: en-bless_someone's_heart-en-phrase-v0mFtv0U Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 55 45 Disambiguation of 'expression of gratitude': 60 40
  2. (especially Southern US) Used to soften criticism or express pity. (Compare the British usage of bless (“expression of endearment or belittlement”).) Tags: Southern-US, especially Synonyms (criticism or pity): bless someone's cotton socks [British]
    Sense id: en-bless_someone's_heart-en-phrase-~AFqg7fV Categories (other): Southern US English, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 55 45 Disambiguation of 'criticism or pity': 9 91
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: bless [interjection], God love someone

Download JSON data for bless someone's heart meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "A conventional shortening of a wish May God bless (your/her/his/etc) heart.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "bless someone's heart",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "55 45",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to express gratitude. (Compare bless you, God bless you.)"
      ],
      "id": "en-bless_someone's_heart-en-phrase-v0mFtv0U",
      "links": [
        [
          "bless you",
          "bless you"
        ],
        [
          "God bless you",
          "God bless you"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "60 40",
          "sense": "expression of gratitude",
          "word": "bless you"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Southern US English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "55 45",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002, Hack Proofing Your Identity In The Information Age, page 9",
          "text": "We just moved my dad to a senior community, and I need to make sure he changed his gas service over to his new address. Bless his heart—he doesn't remember things the way he used to!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Larry Michael Ellis, The Life and Legend of Robert \"Black Bob\" Renfro",
          "text": "“Bob had my permission to travel with Mister Jackson. Mister Jackson asked for his help, and I agreed.”\n“They must have tricked you, bless your heart. How could you know what they were plotting,” Mistress Dean said in her most sympathetic tone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Jerry Deriso, Save Me A Place In Heaven",
          "text": "\"Bless her heart, she doesn't have the fashion sense God gave a billygoat.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "text": "My dog can't fit in her puppy bed anymore, but she still tries, bless her heart."
        },
        {
          "text": "They're having a hard time getting used to the food down here. They don't like grits — bless their hearts, they don't even like sweet tea."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to soften criticism or express pity. (Compare the British usage of bless (“expression of endearment or belittlement”).)"
      ],
      "id": "en-bless_someone's_heart-en-phrase-~AFqg7fV",
      "links": [
        [
          "bless",
          "bless#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(especially Southern US) Used to soften criticism or express pity. (Compare the British usage of bless (“expression of endearment or belittlement”).)"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "9 91",
          "sense": "criticism or pity",
          "tags": [
            "British"
          ],
          "word": "bless someone's cotton socks"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Southern-US",
        "especially"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "47 53",
      "tags": [
        "interjection"
      ],
      "word": "bless"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "47 53",
      "word": "God love someone"
    }
  ],
  "word": "bless someone's heart"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English phrases"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "A conventional shortening of a wish May God bless (your/her/his/etc) heart.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "bless someone's heart",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Used to express gratitude. (Compare bless you, God bless you.)"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "bless you",
          "bless you"
        ],
        [
          "God bless you",
          "God bless you"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "Southern US English"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002, Hack Proofing Your Identity In The Information Age, page 9",
          "text": "We just moved my dad to a senior community, and I need to make sure he changed his gas service over to his new address. Bless his heart—he doesn't remember things the way he used to!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Larry Michael Ellis, The Life and Legend of Robert \"Black Bob\" Renfro",
          "text": "“Bob had my permission to travel with Mister Jackson. Mister Jackson asked for his help, and I agreed.”\n“They must have tricked you, bless your heart. How could you know what they were plotting,” Mistress Dean said in her most sympathetic tone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Jerry Deriso, Save Me A Place In Heaven",
          "text": "\"Bless her heart, she doesn't have the fashion sense God gave a billygoat.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "text": "My dog can't fit in her puppy bed anymore, but she still tries, bless her heart."
        },
        {
          "text": "They're having a hard time getting used to the food down here. They don't like grits — bless their hearts, they don't even like sweet tea."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to soften criticism or express pity. (Compare the British usage of bless (“expression of endearment or belittlement”).)"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "bless",
          "bless#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(especially Southern US) Used to soften criticism or express pity. (Compare the British usage of bless (“expression of endearment or belittlement”).)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Southern-US",
        "especially"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "interjection"
      ],
      "word": "bless"
    },
    {
      "sense": "expression of gratitude",
      "word": "bless you"
    },
    {
      "sense": "criticism or pity",
      "tags": [
        "British"
      ],
      "word": "bless someone's cotton socks"
    },
    {
      "word": "God love someone"
    }
  ],
  "word": "bless someone's heart"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.