As opposed to a belief that it is the unholy money you get after diabolically sacrificing a human being, blood money has a range of different meanings.
The open compound word means ‘money paid to a person who is hired to kill somebody’, ‘money paid to the family of a murdered person’ or ‘money paid to someone for giving information about a killer’.
Examples:
- He was a local informant who got rich through blood money.
- The blood money was paid by the government.
- You did the right thing by exposing the killer, so you can accept the blood money.
Other words used in place of blood money include restitution and bloodwite (or bloodwit).