Well, that meant that your humors were out of whack, typically either by having an excess or a deficit of one or more of them. Ayurvedic medicine in India also had a theory of humors, although admittedly I know much less about that one that is, I know pretty much nothing at all. The personality test I will be using myself as a guinea pig on today, however, has its roots in the Greek version, which was the medical norm all the way up until the early 19th century.
Each of the four humors was associated with a particular element, bodily organ, and season of the year, as well as an overall personality type and a few specific traits:. But although the popularity of the humors waned as we started to figure out how the body and mind actually work, they've never fallen out of favor altogether. They're still useful as metaphors, particularly in psychology — and there's even a modern test intended to figure out which humor-based personality type you correspond with.
Unlike most of the other science-based personality tests I've taken recently, this one is pretty quick; it takes around five minutes to complete if you're not documenting your results like I did. First, you're given a whole bunch of words and asked to rank them on how well they describe you. There's a ton of them, but here's an excerpt to give you an idea of the sorts of words we're talking about here:. And then you're asked to do the same for a number of sentences, all of which vary by theme.
Some of them ask about your productivity habits:. Choleric corresponds to the fluid of yellow bile yellowy-green bile is present in the gallbladder , the season of summer dry and hot , and the element of fire.
A person who is choleric is a doer and a leader. They have a lot of ambition, energy and drive, and try to instil it in others, but can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types.
Many great charismatic, military and political figures were cholerics. On the negative side, they are easily angered or bad tempered. There is no bodily fluid corresponding to black to black bile. A person who was a thoughtful ponderer had a melancholic disposition.
Often very kind and considerate, melancholics can be highly creative — as in poets and artists — but also can become overly obsessed by the tragedy and cruelty in the world, thus becoming depressed. It also indicates the season of autumn dry and cold and the element of earth.
A melancholic is often a perfectionist, being very particular about what they want and how they want it. This temperament describes the depressed phase of a bipolar disorder.
A phlegmatic lungs person is calm and unemotional. Phlegmatic means pertaining to phlegm and corresponds to the season of winter wet and cold , and connotes the element of water.
While phlegmatics are generally self-content and kind, their shy personality can often inhibit enthusiasm in others and make themselves lazy and resistant to change. They are very consistent, relaxed, and observant, making them good administrators and diplomats. Like the sanguine personality, the phlegmatic has many friends. But the phlegmatic is more reliable and compassionate; these characteristics typically make the phlegmatic a more dependable friend.
The theory experienced widespread popularity throughout the Middle Ages and was eventually termed humorism also humoralism. Humoral practitioners actively used theory to explain many illnesses of the time. Use of various remedies became commonplace, especially when a person was considered to have too much of a particular fluid. For example, blood letting from veins was performed when certain conditions were reported.
By the 18th Century medicine was advancing rapidly. The discoveries of the functions of the circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems served to discount the four humors theory as a realistic practice of medicine. Now that we're deep into all these humorless-humor words, you won't be surprised to know that the obsolete meaning of splenetic above led to the now-archaic meaning of "given to melancholy. The semantic developments of both words suggest some big feelings regarding the organ itself.
Splenetic moved on from its "given to melancholy" meaning to develop its current meaning of "marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite. Melville's Ishmael knew this last use:. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
It is a way I have of driving off the spleen , and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
Atrabilious comes directly from Latin, in which language atra bilis means " black bile. Atrabilious is by no means a common word, but it has a closely-related synonym that is rarer still: atrabilarious seems to us ripe for revival with a new use that plays off of its rhyming relationship with hilarious.
You know, for all the hilarious atrabilarious types out there. While most of our humorless-humor adjectives describe those thought to have an excess of a particular humor, being low on a particular humor can have consequences as well.
If, for example, your liver isn't secreting enough yellow bile you won't be choleric at all—in fact, you'll lack courage entirely. You'll also theoretically have a liver as white as a lily. Hence the word lily-livered. Shakespeare's Macbeth not the nicest guy by any account lobbed the word at a servant who was feeling apprehensive at the approach of 10, enemy soldiers:. When your humors are out of balance, you need a little something to help you out. Enter the adjective and noun carminative. A carminative agent, aka a carminative, helps the body expel gas from the stomach or intestines so you feel better.
The word comes from Latin carminare , which means "to card. The theory behind carminative is that humors can be combed out like knots in wool. The word is unrelated to carmine , which refers to any of several shades of red and comes possibly from Arabic qirmiz , meaning "kermes"—a red insect-derived dye, and Latin minium , meaning "cinnabar.
The adjective jaundiced has another medical meaning as well: "affected with or as if with jaundice," with jaundice being in simple terms a condition in which excess bile pigments in the bloodstream and body tissues cause a person's skin to turn yellow.
Bile being what it is in the theory of humorless humors, readers at this point should know just where this is going: a build-up of bile surely results in a personality problem. In this case, too much bile and it's the yellow kind, naturally means envy and general surliness. And you thought your complexion was something to be slathered with creams and lotions. While the word today most often refers to the color or appearance of facial skin, or to the general appearance or character of something as in "the complexion of the neighborhood" , it entered the language with a humorless-humor meaning.
Coming ultimately from Latin complecti , meaning "to embrace, to comprise a multitude of objects ," the word entered English in the days of Middle English and from Anglo-French to refer to the combination of qualities—hot, cold, moist, and dry—that were understood to determine the quality of a body and to correlate in various combinations with the humors. The humor thought to be most susceptible to becoming adust was black bile —that is, the one that causes melancholy.
Get some adust black bile going and you are going to be one gloomy soul.
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