blood money

blood money

1. Money paid to a hired killer. Here's your blood money, all right? Just get the job done so that no one ever has to see that fool again!
2. Money paid to the family of someone who has been murdered. That settlement is nothing more than blood money. It can't even begin to make up for our father's murder.
3. Money gained at the expense/suffering of others. I don't want this blood money! My mother worked herself to death making it! Many people consider the profits from conflict diamonds to be blood money.
See also: blood, money
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • better a dollar earned than ten inherited
  • color of someone's money, see the
  • be (right) on the money
  • for a while
  • be pushed for money
  • be pressed for money
  • be pressed/pushed for money, space, time, etc.
  • funny money
  • come into (some) money
  • come into money
References in periodicals archive
The judge who had heard his case in Saudi Arabia had ordered Khan to pay SAR 1.3 million ($350,000) as blood money to the families of the deceased.
The orders passed for the payment of blood money should be deferred till the verdicts on the four appeals are not announced, he argued.
On August 6, just three weeks after the plan to pay blood money was announced, a park ranger in Kerman province was shot dead when he came across three poachers who opened fire on him.
"But in December 2012, we paid them the blood money and submitted the attested compromise documents to the court."
A total SAR 166,892,925 or P23,727,868.65 in blood money was placed in an account opened at the PE Kuwait Bank.
The rehabilitation facility, for example, paid Dh3.5 million in blood money last year to help 17 prisoners while the organisation also paid Dh23 million to 122 prisoners to settle their financial debts.
Failing to pay off the blood money after the insurance company refused to help, the Pakistani driver remained in RAK prison for seven months until four philanthropists intervened and aided his release.
The family said in their letter that they have waived their rights to avenge and decided to take Dhs100,000 in blood money from the killer instead of Dhs200,000.
The blood money has to be paid to the legal heirs of the victim in collaboration with the insurance company concerned.
He said that he had since read about the Zulu tribal initiation ceremony and it is meant to make men out of boys, and condemned Mngeni saying that he had shot a defenceless young woman on her honeymoon and planned to use his blood money to make himself appear as a man.
Mostafa Kiaei, director of "Special Line", said he had learnt by accident of the young man's case and wanted to help raise the "blood money" to be paid to the family of a murder victim.
15--Relatives of the victims who were killed in the military shelling of a funeral tent in Al-Dhale governorate in late December refused to accept an offering of "blood money" made to them on Monday by the governorate's local council.
Steve is directing the tense psychological thriller Blood Money at the Henry Street theatre - and he is convinced audiences will be kept on the edge of their seats as the tense drama unfolds.
Fayhan al-Ghamdi, who is not recognised as a cleric by the Saudi religious circle, was also ordered to pay his ex-wife one million riyals ([pounds sterling]168,000) in "blood money", according to lawyer Turki al-Rasheed.
In a case that drew widespread public condemnation in the kingdom and abroad, the court also ordered Fayhan al-Ghamdi to pay his ex-wife, the girl's mother, one million riyals ($270,000) in "blood money," lawyer Turki al-Rasheed told AFP.