Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Melancholic or hypochondriacal; atrabilious. See atrabile.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Melancholy; atrabilious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete melancholy; atrabilious

Etymologies

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Examples

  • In our anatomy of melancholy there are no such atrabiliar moments as those thirty-three

    Mince Pie Christopher Morley 1923

  • The first, in atrabiliar mood, advised him to sweep crossings, black shoes, break stones by the roadside, cart manure, sell tripe or stocks and shares, blow out his brains rather than enter a profession over whose portals was inscribed the legend, Lasciate ogni speranza -- he snapped his finger and thumb to summon memory as if it were a dog.

    The Fortunate Youth 1914

  • The first, in atrabiliar mood, advised him to sweep crossings, black shoes, break stones by the roadside, cart manure, sell tripe or stocks and shares, blow out his brains rather than enter a profession over whose portals was inscribed the legend, Lasciate ogni speranza -- he snapped his finger and thumb to summon memory as if it were a dog.

    The Fortunate Youth William John Locke 1896

  • It is constantly seen that the waverer, of nervous atrabiliar constitution, no sooner overcomes the agony of irresolution, than he flings himself on his object with a vindictive tenacity that seems to repay him for all the moral humiliation inflicted on him by his stifled doubts.

    Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) Essay 1: Robespierre John Morley 1880

  • But having seen it, and for the first time, as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surcharged with bitterness, atrabiliar.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith George Meredith 1868

  • But having seen it, and for the first time, as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surcharged with bitterness, atrabiliar.

    The Egoist George Meredith 1868

  • Many of these letters represent him in correspondence with the singular men who shared his own half poetic, half scientific turn of mind, with that impressibility towards what one might call the thaumaturgic elements in nature which has often made men dupes, and which is certainly an element in the somewhat atrabiliar mental complexion of that age in England.

    Appreciations, with an Essay on Style Walter Pater 1866

  • He had an atrabiliar complexion, dark hair, and large, dark eyes that looked forth from behind spectacles with a steady, unwinking gaze.

    Anthony Burns : a history, 1856

  • If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese.

    Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History Thomas Carlyle 1838

  • 'Often in my atrabiliar-moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials,

    Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History Thomas Carlyle 1838

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  • From Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution

    March 6, 2011