Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🤢 Feeling sick 😠 Bad-tempered
bilious

bilious

1 8.7
Being bad-tempered and easily annoyed
  • adjective
  • /ˈbɪl.i.əs/
  • Literature
translation icon : irritable
  • After missing lunch, she felt bilious and irritable during the meeting.

He called Bilious Plato's lectures a waste of time.

Examples

  • His bilious comments about the movie showed how frustrated he was with the plot.

  • You know how bilious I've been since your sister went East and you started doing the cooking?

    The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949)

  • What's the matter? That bilious face!

    Fiction book (1990)

  • It makes me kind of bilious.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Dad, I feel bilious.

    Ramona and Beezus (2010)

  • The British seem to produce this kind of bitter, bilious individual: overeducated and yet insensitive, unkind, and even downright cruel, and yet certain that they speak for all mankind.

    Blog text (2)

  • The heat made him feel bilious, and he snapped at everyone around him.

Synonyms

dyspeptic
vsbilious
  • Formal
2 9.1

Having an upset stomach or being bad-tempered

focuses on bad temper rather than physical digestive illness
choleric
vsbilious
1 9.6

Quick to become angry and often bad-tempered

is similar but suggests irritability tied to digestive discomfort
splenitive
vsbilious
  • Archaic
1 9.9

Quick to become angry or take offense

is about general bad temper rather than sensitivity to slights
liverish
vsbilious
  • Archaic
9.9

Feeling a little sick and grumpy, often after eating rich food

expresses bad temper rather than a mild physical illness
atrabilious
vsbilious
  • Archaic
9.9

Being easily angry or often gloomy

focuses on irritable bad temper without the gloomy sadness
crankish
vsbilious
8.3

Becoming easily annoyed and acting in a bad-tempered way

is centered on bad temper and irritability without odd behavior

Antonyms

calm
735 1.0

Not showing strong feelings and being very still

good-natured
19 2.4

Being friendly, cheerful, and easy to get along with

How Irritable

angry
∞ 1.0
bilious
  • Literature
1 8.7
irritable
32 3.7
annoyed
77 1.0
calm
735 1.0

Surface Forms

bilious positive

Morphology

bilious = bile (semi-transparent) = bile + ous

Morphologically formed from 'bile' + '-ous', a clear adjectival formation even if the sense is figurative.

Etymology

Bilious comes from the same Latin root bilis ('bile') because people once thought extra bile made you angry or bitter. So bilious can mean 'bad-tempered' or easily annoyed, as if upset by stomach trouble.