BILE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Bile

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/baɪl/ Listen

noun

Bile n.

(Physiol.) A yellow, or greenish, viscid fluid, usually alkaline in reaction, secreted by the liver. It passes into the intestines, where it aids in the digestive process. Its characteristic constituents are the bile salts, and coloring matters.

Bitterness of feeling; choler; anger; ill humor; as, to stir one's bile. Note: The ancients considered the bile to be the "humor" which caused irascibility.

Bile n. A boil. (Obs. or Archaic)

See images of 'Bile'

Etymology of 'Bile'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Bile" Quotes from Famous Books

... Pennsylvania, on Shiptown road, Clinton County, close to Mercersberg. When I was growing up my mammy always believed in making her own medicine, and doctored the whole family with the roots she dug herself. She use to bile down the roots from may-apple, snake root and blood root, and make her medicine. This was good for the blood and keep us ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... this fuff stirred my own bile. "I have said nothing you can properly object to," said I, "and as for my knees, that is an attitude I keep ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... all, I should utter all the unexplored, repressed and sad thoughts that I feel in the depths of my being. I feel them swelling and poisoning me as bile does some people. But if I could one day give them utterance they would perhaps evaporate, and I might no longer have anything but a light, joyful heart. Who can say? Thinking becomes an abominable torture when the brain is an open wound. I ...

— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... Casteel. Hunger, Hinnissy, is about th' same thing in a raypublic as in a dispotism. They'se not much choice iv unhappiness between a hungry slave an' a hungry freeman. Cubia cudden't cuk or wear freedom. Ye can't make freedom into a stew an' ye can't cut a pair iv pants out iv it. It won't bile, fry, bake or fricassee. Ye can't take two pounds iv fresh creamery freedom, a pound iv north wind, a heapin' taycupfull iv naytional aspirations an' a sprinklin' iv bars fr'm th' naytional air, mix well, cuk over a hot fire an' sarve sthraight fr'm th' shtove; ye can't make a dish out iv ...

— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... was short of bile, And some that his heart was over size, While some kept arguing, all the while, He was crammed with tubercles up to ...

— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

More quotes...