Choleric

Choleric (pronounced kol-er-ik or kuh-ler-ik)

(1) Extremely irritable or easily angered; irascible; bad-tempered.

(2) A person with a choleric temperament.

(3) A person suffering from the infectious disease cholera (rare).

1300–1350: From the Middle English colrik & colerik (bilious of temperament or complexion), from the Old French colerique, from the Medieval Latin colericus (bilious), from the Classical Latin cholericus, from the Ancient Greek cholerikós or kholerikós, from the Greek kholera (a type of disease characterized by diarrhea, supposedly caused by bile), from khole (gall, bile) and so-called for its color, related to khloazein (to be green) & khlōros (pale green, greenish-yellow), from the primitive Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), with derivatives denoting "green, yellow," and thus "bile, gall”.  The meaning "easily angered, hot-tempered" is from 1580s (based on the then-current medical orthodoxy of the supposed effect of excess choler) and the synonyms include wrathful, testy, impatient, touchy, bilious, irascible and peevish.  The more literal use "of or pertaining to cholera" dates only from 1834.  Choleric is a noun & adjective, cholerically & cholericly are adverbs and cholericness is a noun; the noun plural is cholerics.

Many have choleric moments; there are good days and bad days.

It was an excess of the humor of yellow bile (xanthe chole) which made one choleric.  Humoral (humor a translation of the Ancient Greek χυμός (chymos (literally juice or sap, figuratively flavor)) theory (known also as humorism or humoralism), was a system of medicine from antiquity which provided a framework and description of the supposed workings of the human body.  It was the standard model for the philosophers and physicians of Ancient Greek and Rome and endured in Western medicine well into the nineteenth century when many of its assumptions about physical illness were disproved by germ theory and the understanding of the role of pathogens in disease.  The overturning of humoral theory was one of the landmarks in the origins of modernity.

In antiquity it was a concept rather than something with a standardized systemization and there existed competing models with more or fewer components but it’s because the description with four was that endorsed by the Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 460–circa 370 BC) that it became famous in the West and absorbed into medical practice.  The four humors of Hippocratic medicine are black bile (μέλαινα χολή (melaina chole)), yellow bile (ξανθη χολή (xanthe chole)), phlegm (φλέγμα (phlegma)) & blood (αἷμα (haima)), each corresponding with the four temperaments of man and linked also to the four seasons: yellow bile=summer, black bile=autumn, phlegm=winter & blood=spring.  In Hippocratic medicine, to be healthy, the four humors needed to be in balance and this, once achieved, was the state of enkrateia (from the Ancient Greek ἐγκράτεια (eukrasia) (in power), the construct being ἐν (en-) (in-) + κράτος (krátos) (power), a word which appears in the New Testament in the context of virtues (Acts 24:25, Galatians 5:23 & 2 Peter 1:6).  In the King James Version (KJV, 1611), it would be translated as "temperance", a word which went on to assume a life of its own.

Spectrum condition: The redness in the face of Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2021) is used by his colleagues to gauge where his state of mind lies in the adjectival progression of the choleric (left), the more choleric (comparative; centre) and the most choleric (superlative; right).  Mr Joyce’s symptoms (ambitious, leader-like, restless, easily angered) suggest an excess of yellow bile and to counteract this, Hippocrates recommended cold and wet foods such as cucumber or lettuce to bring the humors back into alignment.  Mr Joyce should adopt a cucumber & lettuce diet.