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atrabilious

adj
/ˌæ.tɹəˈbɪl.i.əs/

Etymology

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.

Definitions

  1. Having an excess of black bile.

    • [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.
    • Lame, lank, atrabilious Charles Grey Grey [sic] is a 32nd generation Northumberlander.

  3. Ill-natured

    Ill-natured; malevolent; cantankerous.

    • Fen was in an atrabilious mood. "You've been the devil of a time," he grumbled as Lily Christine III got under way again.
    • Yet at the same time he detected much of this same cheerfulness throughout the ship and something not very far from apparent unconcern, even in so atrabilious a soul as Killick.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for atrabilious. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA