a bleeding heart

A person who shows an overwhelming and often ostentatious display of sympathy, especially for those perceived as victims. He only voted for the tax increase because he's a bleeding heart. He really believes all of that extra money is going to help the homeless. These actors can be such bleeding hearts. If they really wanted to help people, they'd stop tweeting and take action to create good-paying jobs! These bleeding hearts care more about giving handouts than rewarding citizens who work hard.

See also: bleeding, heart

bleeding heart

Fig. someone, usually considered politically liberal or leftist, who is very emotional about certain political issues, such as endangered species, downtrodden people, the suffering poor, etc. Bob is such a bleeding heart. No cause is too far out for him.

See also: bleeding, heart

bleeding heart

a person considered to be dangerously soft-hearted, typically someone too liberal or left-wing in their political beliefs. informal

2005 DVD Verdict Ed Bannon is the lone voice of antagonistic reason in an army filled with lily-livered bleeding hearts.

See also: bleeding, heart

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

bleeding heart

An excessively sympathetic or tender-hearted individual. The adjective bleeding has been used figuratively for full of anguish from pity or compassion since the late 1500s. Edmund Spenser so used it in The Faerie Queene: “These bleeding words she gan to say.” The cliché is much newer, dating from the first half of the twentieth century. I. T. Ross had it in Murder out of School (1960), “A lot of bleeding-hearts got the idea they knew about everything.”

See also: bleeding, heart

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References in periodicals archive

Bleeding Heart also hosts regular "ArtLucks" in which participants each bring a piece of artwork and a dish to share.

Art from the heart

But Bleeding Heart Pigeons retain enough melodic nous and killer riffage to create an album that remains instantly likeable.

No Pigeon - holing Limerick boys; Trio given a free reign on their debut album and the resulting sound Is a unique production; The Big Interview

With Valentine's Day looming, the centre's sole Luzon bleeding heart dove is all alone and looking for love.

Lonely Luzon looking for love

Cash-eating cows, competitive ayatollahs, the bleeding heart of social policies, big brother, and a paper tiger with teething problems are among the characters.

Uniting Europe: Journey Between Gloom and Glory

I am not a bleeding heart liberal, I have a long love of racing and I also believe jockeys must carry and use whips, proper whips not these ridiculous sponge things, for the sake of racing and the future of the breed.

Letter: No master class from an erring champion

The fear kept me an alien among the statues tucked in dim corners, the exposed bleeding heart hung in the kitchen beyond which I rarely penetrated.

Paths of conversion

To camouflage gaps left by dormant bleeding heart, plant low ferns or forget-me-nots in the same area.

Bleeding hearts ... lacy ground covers in the right place

Is the debut album from Bleeding Heart Pigeons is out today and the band play Dolan's Limerick on March 11 and Whelan's Dublin on March 12.

No Pigeonholing Limerick boys; Trio given a free reign on their debut album and the resulting sound Is a unique production; The Big Interview

Do you really know anything about child poverty or are you just more bleeding heart left-wingers?

So what are you doing, Father?

The Bleeding Heart singer was wearing another bizarre self-designed creation similar to the one she sported the day before.

Designer Leona takes a bow

Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding heart) THIS reliable, elegant, clump-forming perennial bears fragile-looking, heart-shaped flowers with rose-pink outer petals and white inner ones, hanging from arching stems, in late spring and early summer.

Best of the bunch

But please, spare me the clubs playing the bleeding heart card with fans by blaming it all on the SPL.

Clubs sold jerseys for telly cash

When Jack Frost had breathed his hoary breath On the barren fields and the cold bitter wind Had blown the petals off its decaying stem When the black cloudy sky was in its darkest mood And the cold sun brought no warmth And a bleeding heart Stained the Robin's breast.

Your Poem Why?

A team of judges from Restaurant Magazine and the Craft Guild of Chefs sampled the dishes anonymously before deciding on the winners, and chose Oscar's above two London restaurants, the Bleeding Heart and Big Easy.

Bistro's steak and chips 'is the best'

Well, I'm writing to upset the legion of bleeding heart liberals, the cohorts of expert social apologists, the wearers of rose tinted spectacles who live in a perpetual state of "Happy Valley" belief that there's good in everyone ...

Ignore sob story, thrash 'em