spleen

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   In vertebrates, including humans, a ductless vascular gland, located in the left upper…

   In vertebrates, including humans, a ductless vascular gland, located in the left upper abdomen near the stomach, which destroys old red blood cells, removes debris from the bloodstream, acts as a reservoir of blood, and produces lymphocytes.

2. 2

   A bad mood

   A bad mood; spitefulness. Compare gall.

   • In noble minds some dregs remain, / Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain.
   • Too many, however, who might take an honourable stand, fear the petty spleen of the plantocracy; preferring the most disgusting adulation, to the blessing of him ready to perish.
   • The name I like best, however, I heard uttered by the Eldest Son of the House of Chou, who in a moment of spleen referred to his colleague of the House of Liang as hsiao chu-tan, the Little Pig’s Egg.
3. 3

   A sudden motion or action

   A sudden motion or action; a fit; a freak; a whim.

   • A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways. Brief as the lightning in the collied night; That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth
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   1. 4

      Melancholy

      Melancholy; hypochondriacal affections.

      • Bodies changed to various forms by spleen.
      • There is a luxury in self-dispraise: / And inward self-disparagement affords / To meditative spleen a grateful feast.
   2. 5

      A fit of immoderate laughter or merriment.

      • By virtue, thou enforcest laughter ; thy silly thought, my spleen
   3. 6

      To dislike.

      • T. Wentworth ſpleen'd the Bishop
   4. 7

      To annoy or irritate.

      • There had been a good deal of provocation, we have no doubt, before the republican simplicity, at which Mrs Trollope seems to have been so justly offended, was spleened into speaking of the old woman.
      • If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother.
   5. 8

      To complain

      To complain; to rail; to vent one's spleen.

      • It was satisfactory to a majority of the bolters, but most of the democrats spleened against him.
      • He never counseled litigation for the sake of litigation, and no client ever complained of his loyalty, He hated sham and pretense, and openly spleened at the empty mouthing oracle of the street corner, the society, or the church.
      • O Captain, my Captain, I shan't migrain that fight —A teritable Dunga Minh art thou, A phantom of loneflight; And though I've swaggered you and spleened you, By the living bilge that gleaned you — You're a better man than I am, Dunga Minh!
   6. 9

      To remove the spleen, or, by extension, to gore.

      • I grant a good deal to Grecian pride of prose, and Roman fund of poesy, when spleened and gored to shame, defeat, and loss of prestige, on the battle-field by mere "barbaric" ( ? ) troops of Cimbric Hyperborean Celts.
      • "That is true," quoth Albertu, “but pray consider on the other side that animals spleened grow extremely salacious, an experiment well known in dogs."
   7. 10

      To excise or remove.

      • That will be how we lose what we have gained, The incremental rapture at the core, Spleened of the belly's thick placental wrath, And the seed's roar.
      • Picking up where I left off...broken down, knowing they'd pick through my bones like vultures for what marrow they hadn't already spleened from me.
      • There is even a subtle reference to sexuality in the poem, but it is formulated in such a manner that it is spleened of all vulgarity.

The neighborhood

• synonymlien
• synonymmilt
• neighborsplen-
• neighborsplenectomy
• neighborsplenetic
• neighborsplenic
• neighborspleno-
• neighborsplenocleisis
• neighborsplenomegaly
• neighborsplenosis