sanguinary

adj

1. Involving bloodshed.

   “We may not propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences.”

   “"[…] every one of which took its rise from some noble family that succeeded in grasping the purple after a sanguinary struggle."”

   “It was not merely distaste for court life at Ch’ang An that urged the emperor to make war upon this country. China had substantial grievances against the peninsula kingdom. In the year a.d. 642 P’ing Jang, the Korean capital, had been convulsed by a revolution more sanguinary and more successful than that which had menaced the Chinese court.”

2. Eager to shed blood; bloodthirsty.

   “Passion […] makes us brutal and sanguinary.”

   “"The defence set up for Mahomet is equally availing for every sanguinary and revengeful tyrant; […]"”

3. Consisting of, covered with, or similar in appearance to blood.

   “I was once, I remember, called to a patient who had received a violent contusion in his tibia, by which the exterior cutis was lacerated, so that there was a profuse sanguinary discharge […]”

   “Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster—and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies […], that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence.”

   “We reached the Point just as a flood of sunset light was dripping from the heavens, staining the lagoon an ominous, sanguinary hue.”

noun

1. A bloodthirsty person.
2. The plant common yarrow, or herba sanguinaria (Achillea millefolium).