black bile
one of the four elemental bodily humors of medieval physiology, regarded as causing gloominess.
Origin of black bile
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use black bile in a sentence
According to this celebrated theory there are four humors in the body—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) | Henry Smith WilliamsAbscess of the liver depends upon some vice of the blood, the bile, the phlegm or the black-bile.
Gilbertus Anglicus | Henry Ebenezer HandersonBut these various pursuits did not banish all her cares, or carry off all her constitutional black bile.
Mary | Mary WollstonecraftThese four "humours" were blood, phlegm, yellow bile (or choler), and black bile (or melancholy).
Stories That Words Tell Us | Elizabeth O'NeillThree days later Black, of Georgia, "poured forth his black bile" for an hour and a half.
John Quincy Adams | John. T. Morse
British Dictionary definitions for black bile
archaic one of the four bodily humours; melancholy: See humour (def. 8)
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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