black bile

1. 1.

   a humor that was once believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen and to cause sadness and melancholy

   Synonymsmelancholy

   Broaderliquid body substance

Questions about black bile

What does black bile mean?

black bile means "a humor that was once believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen and to cause sadness and melancholy".

What is another word for black bile?

Close synonyms include melancholy. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is black bile a common word?

black bile is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.