Talk:Bleeding heart

What is the etymology of the term bleeding heart, exactly? I am trying to understand how someone relates the literal meaning of a bleeding heart to what the term is used as now.
 * In the case of the birds called bleeding-hearts, it is obvious once you see one - see the picture in Luzon Bleeding-heart.  seglea 22:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I was more thinking of the political sense of the word.
 * The heart symbolizes sympathy. The word "bleeding" refers to the excessive gushing of such sympathy, possibly even to a detrimental degree (to actually be bled on by another person is considered in some cultures to be repulsive). That's my understanding anyway. (And please sign your comments) - SigmaEpsilon → &Sigma;&Epsilon; 18:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Bleeding heart ?
What makes the term bleeding heart politically loaded? I thought it was a term that could be used to describe any person who was overly sympathetic to another person's (or group of people's) plight regardless of politics. Jcpippa 22:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Bleeding heart conservative
As a European, I came here to find a definition of this elusive American term, but find it sadly missing. Could anybody write a Wiki article about it? Glatisant (talk) 11:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Ya 2600:6C48:627F:EB99:A0E5:DD0C:94E0:E269 (talk) 19:55, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

You are correct. See this clip of Canadian LIBERAL Prime Minister Trudeau who brought out the army to combat terrorists in the early 70's use the term "Bleeding Heart". It is not a left-right, Conservative-Liberal related term, but rather as you describe above. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUq9b1XTa0&feature=related

Bleeding Heart Liberal
Bleeding heart, or even "bleeding heart liberal" refers to excessive sympathy. It is true that the attribute of having excessive or unnecessary sympathy often seems to go hand in hand with the ideal of liberalism, and maybe that belongs in this article, but to say that the term bleeding heart refers to liberalism in itself seems incorrect. The article before my edit referred to the bleeding heart as someone being excessively sympathetic, OR excessively liberal. It would be more accurate to say that it refers to someone being excessively sympathetic and that sometimes this is taken as a symptom of excessive liberalism- but that's not the same thing as bleeding heart REFERRING to liberalism. I didn't include this perceived correlation- although it seems to be generally true I wouldn't have any idea how to cite such a statement, without citations it would seem to be my POV more than anything else.

--Αlex (talk) 03:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)