bled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of bleed.

   The soldier bled heavily from the wound on his arm.

   She had bled through the bandage by the time the nurse returned.

   Note

   One short-vowel form serves as both the past tense and the participle, the same pattern as feed and fed. Because bleed works both ways, the participle takes have when the subject does the bleeding (the dye had bled into the paper) and be when the subject undergoes it (a patient was bled; the pipe was bled of air). The spelling is shared with an unrelated North African loanword.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Remote rural country away from towns; the back country or hinterland of a region.

   The family left the city to farm a patch of land deep in the bled.

   Bandits hid out in the bled, far beyond the reach of the law.

   Similarhinterland, backcountry, interior, bush

   Note

   A North African word that reached English through French, which took bled from Algerian Arabic, itself from Arabic bilād. It belongs to writing about French North Africa and is normally used with the article (the bled, out in the bled), much as English speakers say the bush or the outback. As a count noun it forms the plural bleds.

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