ancientsgate wrote:

TeeJay wrote:

Oh, and to make things even more confusing, the subtitles on the Blu-ray say "blood" and not "blud". Hmmmmmm......

Completely whacked that he meant blood, like blood brothers, to me. Also almost as completely whacked that he meant blood, like the red stuff in his veins. ???  But I guess Gatiss said he meant the blood brothers thing?  Either way, in my American opinion, it should be spelled blood. I've never seen it or heard of it as blud-- that doesn't spell anything, except phoenetically. Very very strange, whichever and however.

Actually the term is American in origin. It originates from the Bloods gang in Los Angeles, who started referring to one another as 'blood' in the 80's, as a play on the fact it meant 'family', 'blood relation', and also 'Blood', i.e. a member of the Bloods. The usage then moved, via film and rap music, into the Black British gang community in the 90s and 00s, and then, popularised by the film Kidulthood, is now used anywhere in the UK where there are large numbers of black people (Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, etc), and is also used in an ironic fashion by young white people. It is usually spelled 'blud' because that is how most people who write it spell it, since if you are writing it down at all you are probably texting it.