black bile

American  

noun

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

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black bile British  

noun

1. archaic one of the four bodily humours; melancholy See humour

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Etymology

Origin of black bile

First recorded in 1790–1800

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

black bile

Take humoral theory: In the Middle Ages, the body was thought to consist of four liquid components called humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

From National Geographic ● Nov. 29, 2023

There’s Katharine Minola of “The Taming of the Shrew,” a sharp-tongued woman thought to have too much choler, the melancholic Ophelia of “Hamlet,” whose melancholia demonstrated an excess of black bile, and more.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 7, 2022

Throughout Seçkin’s debut, Sibel fixates on the ancient notion of the body’s four humors — blood, phlegm, black bile and choler — as a means of self-diagnosis for a persistent headache.

From New York Times ● Jan. 21, 2022

The ancient Greeks, for example, believed mental disorders arose when the digestive tract produced too much black bile.

From Science Magazine ● May 7, 2020

It shows a half-man, half-woman surrounded by the signs of the zodiac and the four "humors" that for centuries doctors believed controlled health—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.

From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman