bloodthirsty

Etymology

From blood + thirsty. Cognate with West Frisian bloeddorstich (“bloodthirsty”), Dutch bloeddorstig (“bloodthirsty”), German blutdürstig (“bloodthirsty”), Danish blodtørstig (“bloodthirsty”), Swedish blodtörstig (“bloodthristy”), Norwegian blodtørstig (“bloodthirsty”).

adj

1. Thirsty for blood: inexorably violent or eager for bloodshed; murderous.
   The genuine "bloodhound" is not, naturally, the cruel, bloodthirsty animal he is generally supposed to be; nor is he the only dog that will hunt men. Like all pure hounds, he is mild, loving, and kind, and will hunt any game for which he is trained; […] 12 March 1870, “Bloodhounds”, in Oliver Optic [pseudonym; William Taylor Adams], editor, Our Boys and Girls: Oliver Optic’s Magazine, volume VII, number 167, Boston, Mass.: Lee and Shepard, publishers; […], →OCLC, page 169, column 2
   The slasher narrative is as simple as a knife in the head: Some tragic event creates a killer who then seeks bloodthirsty revenge for that primal trauma, and audiences hoot and cringe in equal measure as characters lose their lives one by one, often in unexpected or inventive ways, until a resourceful “Final Girl” manages to defeat the monster. 27 October 2017, Alex McLevy, “Making a Killing: The Brief Life and Bloody Death of the Post-Scream Slasher Revival”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2018-03-05
2. Of a book, film, etc.: depicting much violence; gory, violent.
   [T]here has been recently a tendency on the part of some Education Authorities to select these manifestly worthy portions exclusively, and to avoid reading the more archaic and, so to speak, bloodthirsty books, such as Judges, Kings, and Genesis, altogether. 2 August 1907, Oliver Lodge, “The Religious Education of Children”, in George Harvey, editor, North American Review, volume CLXXXVI, number DCXX, New York, N.Y.: The North American Review Publishing Co., →OCLC, section III, page 707
3. (humorous) Of a mosquito, tenaciously seeking to draw blood.