blessed

• blessèd, blesséd (poetic)
• blest (archaic)

Adjective

• enPR: blĕsʹĭd, IPA^(key): /ˈblɛsɪd/, /blɛst/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛsɪd
• Hyphenation: bless‧ed

Verb

• enPR: blĕst, IPA^(key): /blɛst/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛst
• Hyphenation: blessed

blessed (comparative more blessed, superlative most blessed)

1. Having divine aid, or protection, or other blessing.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 5:5:

     Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

2. (Roman Catholicism) A title indicating the beatification of a person, thus allowing public veneration of those who have lived in sanctity or died as martyrs.
3. Held in veneration; revered.
   • 1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 6:

     ‘My blessed Public must have a pretty girl’s face. Romance isn’t romance, adventure is as dull as dishwater...to my Public...unless, every so often, a face to sink a thousand ships, or is it saps? shows up.’

4. Worthy of worship; holy.
5. Elect or saved after death; hence (euphemistic) dead.
   • 1829, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems:

     I know—for Death, who comes for me
     From regions of the blest afar,
     Where there is nothing to deceive,
     Hath left his iron gate ajar, […]

6. (informal, euphemistic) damned (as an intensifier or vehement denial)

   Not one blessed person offered to help me out.

   I'm blessed if I'm going to drive all that way at this time of night.

• (revered): revered, venerated, worshipped, worshiped
• (holy): hallowed, holy, sacred

• (antonym(s) of “having divine aid, or protection, or other blessing”): condemned, cursed, damned
• (antonym(s) of “revered”): contemned, despised, scorned
• (antonym(s) of “holy”): profane, unhallowed, unholy

blessed

1. simple past and past participle of bless

• bedless

• IPA^(key): /blɛst/

blessed

1. simple past of bless
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Blessed yarth amang meyen.

     Blessed art thou amongst women.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 56