Atrabilious

Someone who’s “atrabilious” (at-ruh-BIL-yus) is gloomy or irritable. The word is from the Latin for “black bile,” going back to a time when it was believed that an excess of black bile in the system caused melancholy.

Example (as used by Patrick O’Brian in The Hundred Days): “Captain Aubrey’s steward [was] an ill-faced, ill-tempered, meagre, atrabilious, shrewish man who kept his officer’s uniform, equipment and silver in a state of exact, old-maidish order come wind or high water.”

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