different between melancholy vs atrabilious

English

Alternative forms

• melancholly, melancholie, melancholious (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English malencolie, from Old French melancolie, from Ancient Greek ?????????? (melankholía, “atrabiliousness”), from ????? (mélas), ?????- (melan-, “black, dark, murky”) + ???? (khol?, “bile”). Compare the Latin ?tra b?lis (“black bile”). The adjectival use is a Middle English innovation, perhaps influenced by the suffixes -y, -ly.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?mel?nk?li/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?m?l.?n?k?l.i/

Noun

melancholy (countable and uncountable, plural melancholies)

1. (historical) Black bile, formerly thought to be one of the four "cardinal humours" of animal bodies.
   • , Bk.I, New York 2001, p.148:

     Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, […] is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones.

2. Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
   • 1593, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, V. i. 34:

     My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.

   • 1599, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act IV, Scene 1,^[1]

     I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

Translations

Adjective

melancholy (comparative more melancholy, superlative most melancholy)

1. (literary) Affected with great sadness or depression.

Synonyms

• (thoughtful sadness): melancholic
• See also Thesaurus:sad

Translations

Related terms

• melancholic
• sadness
• melancholia

English

Etymology

From Latin ?tra b?lis (“black bile”) (?ter (“dark, black”) + b?lis (“bile”)) +? -ous (“full of”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?æ.t???b?.li.?s/
• Hyphenation: atra?bili?ous

Adjective

atrabilious (comparative more atrabilious, superlative most atrabilious)

1. (medicine, obsolete) Having an excess of black bile.
   • 1645, Arthur Wilson, quoted in Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-century England, London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1984, ISBN 978-0-297-78381-7:

     [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.

   Do we listen to pop music because of atrabiliousness, or are we atrabilious because we listen to pop music? (High Fidelity magazine paraphrase)
3. Ill-natured; malevolent; cantankerous.

Synonyms

• (characterized by melancholy): See Thesaurus:sad or Thesaurus:lamentable
• (ill-natured): See Thesaurus:irritable

Related terms

• atrabilarious
• atrabiliously
• atrabiliousness