bad blood

Tension and disdain between two or more people due to past disagreement or transgressions. Last year's brutal playoff series created some bad blood between these two teams. There's bad blood between Elise and Piper, so don't leave them alone together.

unpleasant feelings or animosity between people. (*Typically: be ~; have ~.) There is bad blood between Fred and Jim. They cannot be civil to one another. There is no bad blood between us. I don't know why we should quarrel.

Anger or hostility between persons or groups, as in There's been bad blood between the two families for years. This term is based on the old association with blood and emotion, particularly anger. Versions such as ill blood preceded it; Charles Lamb was among the first to use the idiom in its current form in an 1823 essay.

COMMON If there is bad blood between two people or groups, they have hostile feelings towards each other because of the arguments they have had in the past. The situation has reached crisis point because of the bad blood between the two. Mr Levy said his relations with officials have been very friendly. There is no bad blood. Note: People used to think that feelings such as anger and resentment were carried in the blood.

Long-standing animosity.

Anger or animosity, between individuals or groups. The blood was long regarded as the seat of human emotion, and by the sixteenth century it was particularly associated with high temper and anger. “To breed bad (or ill) blood” meant to stir up hard feelings. In the late eighteenth century, both Jonathan Swift in England and Thomas Jefferson in America wrote of ill blood in this way, and a few years later the English essayist Charles Lamb wrote of bad blood.