Bloodbath As Oxford English Dictionary Word of The Day
The Oxford English Dictionary chose “Bloodbath” as its Word of The Day and sent it to everyone on the emailing list. It came with a definition:
n. 1814. A battle or fight at which much blood is spilt; a wholesale slaughter, a massacre.
People were not happy of the choice of the word because of the recent shooting in Connecticut and OED was bombarded with angry tweets.
An apology was issued by OED:
OED Word of the Day: An Apology – 18.12.2012
We would like to apologize unreservedly for the publication of bloodbath as the word of the day on 18th December 2012.
The OED word of the day is selected months in advance by an editorial committee, and is distributed automatically each day. The timing of today’s word is a coincidence of the worst kind, and we apologize for any distress or upset caused by what might appear to be a highly insensitive choice. What we hope to show with our words of the day is that even seemingly commonplace words can have interesting etymologies; however we have removed today’s word from OED Online and are now taking immediate steps to review our scheduling and selection policy.
– The OED team