Origin Story
Melancholy carries within it a fascinating idea from ancient medicine. In Greek, melan means "black" and khole means "bile," and together they make "black bile." The physicians of ancient Greece believed that four humors flowed through the body — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — and that their balance determined a person's temperament and mood. When black bile grew too plentiful, they thought, the spirit would sink into sadness. And so deep sorrow and gloom came to be called melancholia, "black bile." The theory is medically wrong, yet the word has survived intact.
Other personality words come from this four-humors theory as well. Too much yellow bile (choler) made one hot-tempered (choleric); too much phlegm made one unflappable (phlegmatic). Even the word humor — which once meant "bodily fluid" — comes from the same theory.
-
Online Etymology Dictionarymelancholy (n.): "sadness, gloom," mid-14c., from Old French melancolie, from Late Latin melancholia, from Greek melankholia "sadness," literally "black bile," from melas "black" + khole "bile"
-
Merriam-Webster Dictionarymelancholy: from Greek melancholia, from melan- black + chole bile
-
Oxford English Dictionarymelancholy: from Greek melankholia, from melas, melan- "black" + khole "bile," from the old medical theory of the four humours
Word Evolution
Words from the Same Root
Memory Hook
Remember melancholy = melan ("black") + chole ("bile"). It shares its root with melanin, the black pigment.
""The ancients painted the color of deep sorrow as black bile.""
