god bless you
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.15 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
intj
May God bless you; said as a short prayer, benediction, or valediction for the recipient; usually religiously; sometimes nonliterally but rhetorically or culturally.
intj
Said to somebody who has sneezed, as a rhetorical response; alternative form of bless you.
Example Sentences
- "I heard you helped them with clearing away the downed tree. God bless you! The Lord provides!"
- "You got that whole area cleaned up in one day? God bless you! I'll buy your coffee today!"
- "“But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear—But I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate good-will, by shewing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good bye,—God bless you!” And with these words, he almost ran out of the room."
Etymology
From Middle English God blesse you, God blisse you. A clause in the present subjunctive inherited intact from a time when English was freely productive of it. Diachronically it is not a shortening; synchronically it is often surface-analyzed as such; present-day English has a heavy need for the modal auxiliary (may) to ensure syntactic clarity, whereas earlier English could more easily drop it.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
God bless you ! (canonical)