adjective
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bad-tempered
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bilious or causing biliousness
Usage
What does choleric mean? Choleric means easily angered or generally bad-tempered. People described as choleric are grouchy all the time and prone to getting into arguments, often for very little reason. The word choleric comes from the medieval notion that people’s personalities are based on the balance of four different types of elemental fluids in their body, called humors. A choleric person was thought to be generally irritable due to the amount of yellow bile, or choler, in their body. Example: She was the kind of choleric person who would get into a fight over anything and everything.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of choleric
1300–50; Middle English colerik < Medieval Latin colericus bilious, Latin cholericus < Greek cholerikós. See cholera, -ic
Explanation
Are you easy to tick off? Known to have a short fuse? Then, you could be described as choleric. Don't worry; it's not a disease related to cholera. Choleric just means you're testy and irritable. Before the advent of modern medicine, most folks believed that health and disease were the result of the balance of "humors" in the body. If you were quick to anger, you were thought to have too much choler in your system. You were called choleric. W. C. Fields, Richard Nixon, and Ebenezer Scrooge are just a few people famous for being choleric, easy to tick off.
Vocabulary lists containing choleric
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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The New SAT: Words to Capture Tone
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The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 8
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
For centuries the finest medical minds harped on attuning a balance among the four humors—sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic—in tender young constitutions by adjusting the proportions of hot-cold and moist-dry elements in the diet.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
Even outside politics, Mr. Jones’s choleric, wide-eyed style has influenced the way in which a new generation of conspiracy theorists looks for fame online.
From New York Times ● Aug. 6, 2022
Goodell’s imposition of “discipline” — an infantilizing word for adult workplace conduct — has veered between politically calculating and choleric.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 2, 2022
Griffith was one of those self-mythologizing frontier characters, a self-promoter of choleric temper and roller-coaster fortunes; the “colonel” title itself is of murky origin, perhaps from some brief spell with the California National Guard.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2022
The innkeeper, who was a choleric gnome of poor disposition, looked out of the door.
From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
