black bile


noun
  1. one of the four elemental bodily humors of medieval physiology, regarded as causing gloominess.

Origin of black bile

1
First recorded in 1790–1800

Words Nearby black bile

Dictionary.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.

  • Abscess of the liver depends upon some vice of the blood, the bile, the phlegm or the black-bile.

    Gilbertus Anglicus | Henry Ebenezer Handerson
  • But these various pursuits did not banish all her cares, or carry off all her constitutional black bile.

    Mary | Mary Wollstonecraft
  • These four "humours" were blood, phlegm, yellow bile (or choler), and black bile (or melancholy).

    Stories That Words Tell Us | Elizabeth O'Neill
  • Three 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

black bile

noun
  1. 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