atrabilious

形容词 adj.

英文释义

形容词 adj.
  1. Having an excess of black bile. obsolete
    — [I] could see nothing in the evidence which did persuade me to think them other than poor, melancholy, envious, mischievous, ill-disposed, ill-dieted, atrabilious constitutions.
  2. Characterized by melancholy.
    — But the torch of taste has for the moment fallen into the hands of little men, anæmic and atrabilious, with neither laughter nor pity in their hearts.
  3. Ill-natured; malevolent; cantankerous.
    — Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament, and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile, as is said to have happened to Heracles among the heroes? For he appears to have been of this nature, wherefore epileptic afflictions were called by the ancients 'the sacred disease' after him. That his temperament was atrabilious is shown by the fury which he displayed towards his children and the eruption of sores which took place on Mount Oeta; for this often occurs as the result of black bile.

词形变化

more atrabilious comparative most atrabilious superlative

词源

From Latin ātra bīlis (“black bile”) (āter (“dark, black”) + bīlis (“bile”)) + -ous (“full of”), referring to the humour which ancient Hippocratic and later Galenic medicine associated with sadness and despondency.
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