black bile
- noun
- Archaic
:
bilis negra
- Melancholia comes from Melania Cole, the word for black bile, the humor believed to cause sadness.
Some people are just more irascible because they have more black bile within their system.
- Some people are just more irascible because they have more black bile within their system.
- All right, The notion of being melancholic comes from the, the notion of black bile produced in the liver.
- But the medical science at that time was still the four humors theory that people were made of yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm.
Examples
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Those who had too much black bile were melancholic, while those with an excess of yellow bile were choleric, predisposed to anger.
Academic text (2000) -
People believed that an excess of black bile was responsible for the melancholic temperament observed in some individuals.
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Some people are just more irascible because they have more black bile within their system.
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All right, The notion of being melancholic comes from the, the notion of black bile produced in the liver.
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It's like, yes the excessive black bile, Eat some warm food OK on chap you'll be fine.
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I can see Ms. Lonesome hold her breath as Poppy takes one, and I can see her continue to hold it as Poppy, in one retch, vomits a tablespoon of black bile into the pot.
Fiction book (1998) -
According to the bishop, the disease was not contagious because one could not contract the humoral imbalance—excess black bile in the blood—that caused leprosy by contact with a person infected with the disease.
Academic text (2006) -
In medieval medicine, too much black bile was thought to cause feelings of sadness and melancholy.
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According to ancient theories, a balance of the body's humors was essential, with black bile linked to depression and sadness.
Synonyms
1
9.9
An old medical idea that a body fluid caused sadness
Surface Forms
Morphology
black + bile
Although 'black' and 'bile' have clear literal senses (a dark color and a bodily fluid), the historical medical meaning—that a particular humor causes sadness or melancholy—is a culturally specific humoral concept not predictably derivable from those constituents. A B1 learner who knows the words would not reliably infer the specialized medical/temperamental sense without prior exposure, so the expression is not compositionally transparent.
Etymology
Black bile comes from old medicine. One popular idea said the body had four fluids and too much black bile made a person feel 'sad' or 'melancholy', so the term came to mean a gloomy mood.