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

In my opinion, nothing will change because our lily-livered politicians haven't the guts to stand up to all those bleeding-heart do-gooders out there.

VENT YOUR SPLEEN

Don't believe it's because those bleeding-hearts are guided by a keen sense of morality.

Lorne Jackson: Why good cops just can't win

Even to write these words is to brand myself as a hopelessly out-of-date bleeding-heart liberal.

Land of good-guy prosecutors

The nanny state and its bleeding-heart do-gooders must stop allowing criminals such as Carli Purvis from escaping society's retribution.

Such inequality is pure injustice

OH, how those bleeding-heart non-Liberals wept for that doughty little old lady who took on the government single-handed by refusing to pay her council tax.

BRIAN READE: EU're a fraud, Liz

Our national newspaper of record, The New York Times, however, did cover the strikes, and after reading these stories, I'm so glad that here in America we've jettisoned that old muddle-headed, bleeding-heart thinking about inefficient government "entitlements" and have recognized that if just left alone, the altruistic and compassionate free market will solve everything.

Strike? What strike?

But her solo debut is a desperate bleeding-heart ballad.

MUSIC: NEW SINGLES

Referees are ready to stage an unprecedented revolt if the Sheffield Wednesday hothead is afforded bleeding-heart leniency by a Football Association commission.

Di Canio must be hit hard say refs

He built this kind of world, and if he finds it painful, good." See, it's white bleeding-heart liberals who are really responsible for racial tensions in America.

Missing stories department

-HOW dare the bleeding-heart liberals in the judiciary and the church accuse me, as a taxpayer, of failing Myra Hindley and treating her unfairly by keeping her in prison for the past 36 years.

Mirror M@ilbox: Mum's agony lasts forever

Bleeding-heart liberals, no doubt applaud the actions of Firfield Community School for paying to put bums on classroom seats.

Sue Carroll Column: THEY'LL NEVER LEARN