THE CAT'S PAJAMAS XLIII

Tad Tuleja 

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

The basic sense of the adage, blood is thicker than water is that family ties, or blood relationships, are more durable than non-family ones. Water is used here as the comparative because the original "thick blood" family was the royal English Stuarts, whose last sitting king, James II, was exiled "over the water" into France in the year 1869. When 17th and 18th-century followers of James and his descendants spoke of blood being thicker than water, they meant that the Roman Catholic Stuarts were the rightful blood line of the realm, and that this line would eventually triumph over the Channel water that was separating them from the throne. This never happened, but the expression has been a winning one to this day.