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Phlegm   Listen
noun
Phlegm  n.  
1.
One of the four humors of which the ancients supposed the blood to be composed. See Humor.
2.
(Physiol.) Viscid mucus secreted in abnormal quantity in the respiratory and digestive passages.
3.
(Old Chem.) A watery distilled liquor, in distinction from a spirituous liquor.
4.
Sluggishness of temperament; dullness; want of interest; indifference; coldness. "They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Phlegm" Quotes from Famous Books



... his critical British phlegm that he was surrounded, immersed against his will, in floods of emotion. Among his fellow travellers the French element predominated. Heavens! how they talked—jabbered would be the better word—laughed and cried! How they hugged and embraced one another! Coxeter thanked ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... complexion in the first formation of the person that enjoys it, and is Nature's gift, but diversified by various specific characters and limitations, as its active fire is blended and allayed by different proportions of phlegm, or reduced and regulated by the contrast of opposite ferments. Therefore, as there happens in the composition of facetious genius a greater or less, though still an inferior, degree of judgment and prudence, one man of wit will be varied and ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... that they might always remain open, and not be liable to collapse; and that they might continue entirely free from blood, lest the liquid should interfere with the passage of the air, as it so obviously does when the lungs labour from being either greatly oppressed or loaded in a less degree with phlegm, as they are when the breathing is performed with a sibilous ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... married woman? Was it because she had moral scruples? Was it at bottom because she did not care for him? Was it because she could not care for anybody? Was it because his fervid manner of love-making offended her English phlegm? And did she feel pleased or displeased by his forbearance in not renewing the assault? She could not answer. She ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... proportions to make men and things. Such a doctrine was fatal to the Church. No greater heresy could be charged against the worst Arab or Jew, and Thomas was so well aware of his danger that he recoiled from it with a vehemence not at all in keeping with his supposed phlegm. With feverish eagerness to get clear of such companions, he denied and denounced, in all companies, in season and out of season, the idea that intellect was one and the same for all men, differing only with the quantity of matter it accompanied. He challenged ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... her you were," returned Mrs. Pinckney, who saw he was trying to tease her, and had recovered by this time her equanimity. In spite of his phlegm he looked interested. "You'd better take care and make no reference to the war, for she is furiously loyal, I can tell you," said Mrs. Pinckney, recalling the conversation. "Since when have you been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers. As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slow nerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderly as Hals's or Steen's, but their saving phlegm was missing. In an eloquent passage—somewhere in his English Literature—Taine speaks of the sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare. Genius narrowly escapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marlowe to set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... not have looked so guilty if he had been guilty. He shuffled into the house like a boy who comes home late from swimming; and when he called aloud "Pheeny! Oh, Pheeny!" his voice cracked and his throat was uncertain with phlegm. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... the Italian vivacity and impatience; Don Louis all the Spanish phlegm and tenaciousness. The point which the Cardinal had most at heart was, to hinder the re-establishment of the Prince of Conde, his implacable enemy; but he was in haste to conclude, and impatient to return to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... there is something divine in the souls of men are not equally strong? but if I could account for the origin of these divine properties, then I might also be able to explain how they might cease to exist; for I think I can account for the manner in which the blood, and bile, and phlegm, and bones, and nerves, and veins, and all the limbs, and the shape of the whole body, were put together and made; aye, and even as to the soul itself, were there nothing more in it than a principle of life, then the life of a man might be put upon the same footing as ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... with sparkling eyes, laughing at my discomposure, in a half impatience of my stolid English phlegm. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... ears, followed with water to wet and soften the wax which was dry and hard, to get it back to a fluid state. Both got better of their sore lungs and throats in a short time, and in twenty-four hours they were about well, and lungs coughing out phlegm, easily. From this I think that the cause of croup is simply the result of ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... takes a step from his own door But he looks backward ere he looks before. When once he starts, it were too much to say He visibly gets farther on his way: But all allow, he ponders well his course— For future uses hoarding present force. The flippant deem him slow and saturnine, The summed-up phlegm of that illustrious line; But we, his honest adversaries, who More highly prize him than his false friends do, Frankly admire that simple mass and weight— A solid Roman pillar of the State, So inharmonious with the baser style Of neighbouring columns grafted on the pile, So proud and imperturbable ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... of yours, he's his Son; and he will say, he is no Son to inherit above a shelf of Books: Why did he get him? why was he brought up to write and read, and know these things? why was he not like his Father, a dumb Justice? a flat dull piece of phlegm, shap'd like a man, a reverend Idol in a piece of Arras? Can you lay disobedience, want of manners, or any capital crime to ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... seeing the impossibility of an effectual defence, went with a flag to Colonel John Butler, to know what terms he would grant on a surrender; to which application Butler answered, with more than savage phlegm, in two short words, 'The hatchet.' Dennison, having defended the fort till most of the garrison were killed or disabled, was compelled to surrender at discretion. Some of the unhappy persons in ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... knows what he is about, no doubt," replies Carlton with true English phlegm; "he has made his plan, and I suppose the cavalry have been scouting. It's their business who have got the command to arrange the march and the attack, and ours to do the fighting. It will be soon enough for us to arrange the tactics when we get to be generals. What say you to that, Mr. Graham? ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... shepherd at length trotted on and disappeared, that unique, long-legged example of phlegm and good sense sat down by the shepherd's fire, on exactly the same spot where the shepherd had sat, and began ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... which the tribe Of tedious moralists describe, And by such various titles call, True honour comprehends them all. Let melancholy rule supreme, Choler preside, or blood, or phlegm. It makes no difference in the case. Nor is complexion ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... the people was creditable to their phlegm. The smoke of pipes curling over the numberless heads was the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... rate it has done since the rebellion, the old country folks will, before fifty more years pass over, outnumber and outvote, by ten times, Jean Baptiste, which is a pity, for a better soul than that merry mixture of bonhomie and phlegm, the French Canadian is, the wide world's surface does not produce. Visionary notions of la gloire de la nation Canadienne, instilled into him by restless men, who panted for distinction and cared not for distraction, misled the bonnet rouge awhile: ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... was pure Phlegm, which dropt for about two Hours; a little white unctuous Matter swam on the ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... and Peter picked things up with judgment, and Leslie paid for them with phlegm. They picked up not only carved olive-oil tanks and well-heads and fifteenth-century iron-work gates from ancient and impoverished gardens, but a contemporarily copied Della Robbia fireplace, and designs for Renaissance ceilings, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... indeed. Can your friend produce testimonials—letters that speak to his character?' I wave my hand negligently. 'Letters?' I say. 'Ha! my-soul-bless-my-soul! I should think so, indeed! Volumes of letters and portfolios of testimonials, if you like!' 'One or two will do,' says this man of phlegm and money. 'Let him send them to me, with his name and address. And—stop, stop, Mr. Pesca—before you go to your friend, you had better take a note.' 'Bank-note!' I say, indignantly. 'No bank-note, if you please, till my brave Englishman has earned it first.' 'Bank-note!' says Papa, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... raised by Dutch fish-women, on the arrival of the boats from sea with their cargoes. To talk of Billingsgate in comparison with these women, is to do the Holland and Flemish ladies gross injustice, English phlegm being far more silent than Dutch phlegm. No sooner was my proposition made than it was accepted by acclamation, and the privateersmen began to pour into the boat, heels over head, without order, and I may say without orders. Monsieur Le Gros ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... has a side, you see, surely more sinister Far than the shires that would snatch at her fame; So, when you curse at our present Prime Minister, Calling him every conceivable name, We shall accept 'em with sangfroid and phlegm, as he Gives you this practical proof of his powers, Setting his seal to our sinful supremacy, Seeing he comes from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... The Nigger tells me things are better. The King begins to bring up phlegm; drinks a great deal of oatmeal water [HAFERGRUTZWASSER, comfortable to the sick]; says to the Nigger: 'Pray diligently, all of you; perhaps I ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Yes, precious bad business for them, Sir, Whose joyless enslavement you take with such phlegm, Sir, Suppose, to enhance Their small share of ease, such as you, were content, Sir, To lower a trifle your precious "per cent.," Sir, And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... to the Blue Bell. Just before she reached the inn she encountered Mr. Parmalee himself, taking a constitutional, a cigar in his mouth, and his hands deep in his trousers pockets. He met and greeted his fair betrothed with natural phlegm. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... quiet your anxiety by giving me a diet, Or by base resort to vi et armis fold me to your arms, And let no suspicious tremor violate your wonted phlegm or Any fear that Harold's memory ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... often franker and more courteous manners, while the former bore away the bell for a delicately-balanced combination of insolence and deceit. In the former there was often quick French blood mixed with the marsh-phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this vivacious fluid chiefly appeared in the oilier glibness with which flattery and fiction ran from the tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... "I declare your Northern phlegm is past my comprehension.—'Well,' indeed! it seems to me as bad as bad can be. Only think of it—only six per cent of intelligence united with this illiterate vote ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... skylights' overhang to the alien's level and with looks as beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp, and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore—for the commodore had returned—the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... for, though he did not know as much as Felix of the nature and sentiments of Tod's children, he knew enough to make any but an Englishman uneasy. The fact that he went on eating ham, and said to Clara, "Half a cup!" was proof positive of that mysterious quality called phlegm which had long enabled his country to enjoy the peace of a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... upon certain capillary nerves which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spring into the tongue and two into the right hand. They hold also that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold: that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm. And that what we vulgarly call rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle these ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... Villon with a gulp. "Damn his fat head!" he broke out. "It sticks in my throat like phlegm. What right has a man to have red hair when he is dead?" And he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... because the princes of Christendom had learned the secret to avoid or despise them. Dr. Hickes knew this very well, and therefore, in his answer to this "Book of Rights," where a second part is threatened, like a rash person he desperately crieth, "Let it come." But I, who have not too much phlegm to provoke angry wits of his standard, must tell the author, that the doctor plays the wag, as if he were sure, it were all grimace. For my part, I declare, if he writeth a second part, I will not write another answer; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... upon was the Passions. Alas! said Zadig, how fatal in their Consequences! However, said the Hermit, they are the Winds that swell the Sail of the Vessel. Sometimes, 'tis true, they overset it; but there is no such Thing as sailing without them. Phlegm, indeed, makes Men peevish and sick; but then there is no living without it. Tho' every Thing here below is ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... moment: March 31st, 1751, Prince Fred, the Royal Heir-Apparent, has suddenly died. Had been ill, more or less, for an eight days past; was now thought better, though "still coughing, and bringing up phlegm,"—when, on "Wednesday night between nine and ten," in some lengthier fit of that kind, he clapt his hand on his breast; and the terrified valet heard him say, "JE SUIS MORT!"—and before his poor Wife could run forward with a light, he lay verily dead. [Walpole, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the school-master, doling forth the contents of an ancient ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... this nation, so famous for its phlegm, that at the outset of the war there was such a panic among our intellectuals that they could not write prose at all, but all the papers were full of rhyme? As you know, there is no sign of hysteria ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... a curious story of the Dutch, who have their homesteads on the Mohawk Flats, the richest pasture land in New York. These simple colonists, preserving their ancient habits, pipes, breeches, and phlegm, looked with astonishment at the progress of their Yankee neighbours, and predicted that so much haste and action would soon expend itself. At last came surveyors and engineers, those odious disturbers of antiquity and quiet rural enjoyments: they pointed their ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... much for you, my friend! who own a Church, And would not leave your mother in the lurch! But when a Liberal asks me what I think— 45 Scared by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink, And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam, In search of some safe parable I roam— An emblem sometimes may comprise ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... captious men suspect your story, Speak modestly its history. The traveller, who overleaps the bounds Of probability, confounds; But though men hear your deeds with phlegm, You may with flattery cram them. Hyperboles, though ne'er so great, Will ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... could not have recovered his surprise. I ran up to him. "Sir," said I, "did you see that strange agitation of the waters?" "When, Sir? when, Sir?" "Now, this very instant, not two minutes ago." He replied, with the phlegm of a philosopher, or of a man that can love fishing, "Stay, Sir, let me recollect if I remember nothing of it." "Pray, Sir," said I, scarce able to help laughing, "you must remember whether you remember it or not, for it is scarce over." "I am trying to recollect," said he, with the same coolness. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... heathen was, that perchance they were asleep; but gods that are so sick as that they cannot sleep are in an infirmer condition. A god, and need a physician? A Jupiter, and need an AEsculapius? that must have rhubarb to purge his choler lest he be too angry, and agarick to purge his phlegm lest he be too drowsy; that as Tertullian says of the Egyptian gods, plants and herbs, that "God was beholden to man for growing in his garden," so we must say of these gods, their eternity (an ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... morning prayer before sun rise, the officer who stood nearest to the head of the bed put a sponge steeped in vinegar to Abou Hassan's nose, who immediately turning his head about, without opening his eyes, discharged a kind of phlegm, which was received in a little golden basin before it fell on the carpet. This was the usual effect of the caliph's powder, the sleep lasting longer or shorter, in proportion to the dose. When Abou Hassan laid down ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... suffered me, therefore, to return to my home as I had quitted it, with a mere usual and civil salutation ; while themselves and their house were evidently continuing their common avocations with their common composure. Surely our colloquial use of the word phlegm must be derived from ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... phlegm malign gnaw campaign gnash arraign paradigm feign foreign gnu benign diaphragm reign design seignior resign gnat ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... of gain: The thoughts of common minds were strange to him, Ev'n as to such a Napier's thoughts would seem. Thus, as in men, in peopled states, we find Unequal powers, and varied tones of mind: Timid or dauntless, high of thought or low, O'erwhelmed with phlegm, or fraught with fire they glow And as the sculptor's art is better shown In Parian marble than in porous stone, Wreaths fresh or sear'd repay refinement's toil, As genius owns or dulness stamps the soil. Where isles of coral stud the southern ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... they ever and anon lifted to their moustachioed lips their several goblets, and then, with a complacent grunt, re-settled to their contemplations. Striking was the contrast which their northern phlegm presented to a crowd of Italian clients, and petitioners, and parasites, who walked restlessly to and fro, talking loudly to each other, with all the vehement gestures and varying physiognomy of southern vivacity. There was a general stir and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... high-pitched and querulous rather than deep and defiant, but for continuity it has no rival upon earth. Our hotel—in all other respects unexceptionable—possesses two large bulldogs which have long ago lost their British phlegm, and acquired the agitated yelp of their Gallic neighbours. They could not be quiet if they wanted to, for heavy sleigh-bells (unique decorations for a bulldog) hang about their necks, and jangle merrily at every ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... the chalk of Briancon, coral, antihecticum poterii, and the balm of Canada? As for the turtle-soupe, it is a good restorative and balsamic; but, I apprehend, will tend to thicken rather than attenuate the phlegm. He mentions not a syllable of the air, though it is universally allowed, that the climate of Montpellier is pernicious to ulcerated lungs; and here I cannot help recounting a small adventure which our doctor had with a son of Mr. O—d, merchant in the city of London. I had it from Mrs. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... BITING ARUM. Fresh Root. L. E.—This root is a powerful stimulant and attenuant. It is reckoned a medicine of great efficacy in some cachectic and chlorotic cases; in weakness of the stomach occasioned by a load of viscid phlegm, and in such disorders in general as proceed from a cold sluggish indisposition of the solids and lentor of the fluids. I have experienced great benefit from it in rheumatic pains, particularly those of the fixed kind, and which were seated deep. In these cases I have given from ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... flashes in the dark waters of the river, rose hastily to fill her lungs with a long breath of air, the papyrus boat had resumed its confident way, and Poeri was handling the scull with the imperturbable phlegm of the allegorical personages who row the barge of Maut on the bassi-relievi and the paintings of the temples. The bank was only a few strokes off; the vast shadow of the pylons and the huge walls of the Northern Palace—the dark ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... Genius results from this particular happy Complexion in the first Formation of the Person that enjoys it, and is Nature's Gift, but diversify'd by various specifick Characters and Limitations, as its active Fire is blended and allay'd by different Proportions of Phlegm, or reduc'd and regulated by the Contrast of opposite Ferments. Therefore as there happens in the Composition of a facetious Genius a greater or less, tho still an inferior degree of Judgment and Prudence, and different Kinds of Instincts and ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore

... took it, as usual, with phlegm; but there was a distinct tendency in the bar at Barker's, on market-days, to ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... a day's walk, you see, there is much variance in the mood. From the exhilaration of the start, to the happy phlegm of the arrival, the change is certainly great. As the day goes on, the traveller moves from the one extreme towards the other. He becomes more and more incorporated with the material landscape, and the open-air drunkenness ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... are only frequent and yellow and not accompanied with pain, there is no cause for anxiety; but if the discharges are green, soon becoming gray, brown and sometimes frothy, having a mixture of phlegm, and sometimes containing food undigested, a physician ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... all stopped up and make it hard for me to talk. Phlegm gits all around. I been bothered with ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... with truly British phlegm, "that I can't say positively your story is untrue. Here's the case: Some one—probably Franz von Blenheim—wants to send these papers home by way of Italy and Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... The viscid phlegm, which adheres to the tongue, should be coagulated by some austere acid, as by lemon-juice evaporated to half its quantity, or by crab-juice; and then it may be scraped off by a knife, or rubbed off by flannel, or a sage leaf dipped ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... limped and somewhat yellowish, which is to be decanted from the thick Sediment, and then gently distilled in an Alembick in Arena, by which means, there will come over two differing Liquors, one Phlegmatick, the other Oily, {136} which latter swimming on the Phlegm, is to be severed from it. The Phlegm is used as an excellent Resister and Curer of all the Putrefactions of the Lungs and Liver, and it heals all foul Wounds and Ulcers. The Oily part, being diluted with double its quantity of distilled ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... Aristophanes? Who, if my pen may as my thoughts be free, Were scurril wits and buffoons both to thee; Yet these our learned of severest brow Will deign to look on, and to note them too, That will defy our own, 'tis English stuff, And th' author is not rotten long enough, Alas! what phlegm are they compar'd to thee, In thy Philaster, and Maid's-Tragedy? Where's such a humour as thy Bessus? pray Let them put all their Thrasoes in one play, He shall out-bid them; their conceit was poor, All in a circle of a bawd or ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... disquisition on the history of the city in a guide-book by Dr. Samuel Mitchell. The idea expanded as Irving proceeded, and he ended by not merely satirizing the pedantry of local antiquaries, but by creating a distinct literary type out of the solid Dutch burgher whose phlegm had long been an object of ridicule to the mercurial Americans. Though far from the most finished of Irving's productions, "Knickerbocker" manifests the most original power and is the most genuinely national in its quaintness and drollery. The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... ridicule. The grenadiers, however, were those who especially were made the subject of their sarcasm. They were generally from the north of France, and the frontier country toward Flanders, whence they probably imbibed a portion of that phlegm and moroseness so very unlike the general gayety of French nature; and when assailed by such adversaries, were perfectly incapable ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... itinerant retailers of different commodities, called also pedlars; likewise the sellers of news-papers. Hawking; an effort to spit up the thick phlegm, called OYSTERS: whence it is wit upon record, to ask the person so doing whether he has a licence; a punning allusion to the Act ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... unprecedented cold snap which occurred some years ago. He said that an English colonel, whom he knew, was visiting the city at the time and that, finding himself unable to get water in his bathtub, he sent out for several cases of Apollinaris, and with true British phlegm proceeded to empty them into the tub and get ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... succor for use and ure. And do thou take to thee, O Hajjaj, the greater Salve."[FN83] Cried the Lieutenant, "What may be that?" and said the youth in reply, "A bittock of hard bread eaten[FN84] upon the spittle, for indeed such food consumeth the phlegm and similar humours which be at the mouth of the maw.[FN85] And let not the blood in the hot bath for it enfeebleth man's force, and gaze not upon the metal pots of the Balnea because such sight breedeth dimness ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... plodding soul the fire of enthusiasm had never burned. He was eminently conservative, and looked with wary suspicion on anything that appeared like earnestness. In the midst of a driving, bustling Western city, he stuck in the mud of his German phlegm, like a snag in the swift current of the Mississippi. Yet Mr. Ludolph found him a most valuable assistant. He kept things straight. Under his minute supervision everything had to be right on Saturday night ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... its share of "characters." Some are men born in an uncommon mold, with a great deal of natural phlegm in their systems, a gift for salty speech and a tendency to drawl their words as if their thoughts were being raised from a deep well. Usually, they are men of extraordinary power, and are worth any dozen of that individual who ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... and despair. One edition of jelly was trickled from pot to pot, another lay upon the floor, and a third was burning gaily on the stove. Lotty, with Teutonic phlegm, was calmly eating bread and currant wine, for the jelly was still in a hopelessly liquid state, while Mrs. Brooke, with her apron over her ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... who will take anything for liquor that is liquid." The case is put with scarcely greater politeness by a living French critic of high repute, according to whom the English, still weighted down by Teutonic phlegm, were drunken gluttons, agitated at intervals by poetic enthusiasm, while the Normans, on the other hand, lightened by their transplantation, and by the admixture of a variety of elements, already found the claims of esprit developing themselves within them. This is an explanation which explains ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... thought evinced than for rhetorical beauty or range of imagination; occasionally, however, he would diverge from the plain thread of argument, and rise to declamation of striking brilliancy and power. Over-quick, with all his natural phlegm, to discern and to resent personal affronts—oftentimes when there was no occasion therefor—he was a favorable exemplar of that peculiar, and to our mind, somewhat incomprehensible quality, which the Southern people glory in, and which they dignify by the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... This cynical gipsy phlegm exactly suited Manasseh's mood, and he exerted himself to cheer the poor fellow up, promising to secure his release as soon as he himself should gain an audience ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... Nor does phlegm flow from the head alone; but other parts also pour forth their juices too abundantly or irregularly. For the serosities, which are secreted by the kidneys (whose cavity is even at this day named pelvis by Anatomists) runs into the bladder; which, by reason ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead

... affection of the leg rendered it necessary for him to submit to the amputation of the limb. He submitted to the painful operation with the greatest fortitude, and taking up his severed limb, with his accustomed phlegm remarked ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped. She began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and something ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... the mouth[1] which is noxious to the voice, the phlegm which is destructive to the ..., the pustules of the lungs, the pustule of the body, the loss of the nails, the removal (and) dissolving of old excrement, the skin which is stripped off, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... be impatient, my fine fellow," said the old soldier, continuing his preparations with the phlegm natural to him; "one of the most essential qualities in arms is sang-froid. I was like you at your age; but after the third or fourth sword-blow I received, I understood that I was on the wrong road, and I returned to the right ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... phlegm was a valuable ally in the very contracted quarters into which this question drove him, but his sister was his deliverer. Affecting forgetfulness of the letter and its contents, he glanced down one page, Mrs. Aylett leaning upon his arm, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... Brambletye House, ran a hard race with the novel of Woodstock, and that it contained more than one character not unworthy of the best volumes of Sir Walter. I allude to the ghastly troubles of the Regicide in his lone house; the outward phlegm and merry inward malice of Winky Boss (a happy name), who gravely smoked a pipe with his mouth, and laughed with his eyes; and, above all, to the character of the princely Dutch merchant, who would cry out that he should be ruined, at seeing a few nutmegs dropped from ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... face with impatience at their stupidity. But don't think I ever scold or fly into a passion. If I spoke warmly, as warmly as I sometimes used to do at Roe-Head, they would think me mad. Nobody ever gets into a passion here. Such a thing is not known. The phlegm that thickens their blood is too gluey to boil. They are very false in their relations with each other, but they rarely quarrel, and friendship is a folly they are unacquainted with. The black Swan, M. Heger, is the only sole veritable exception to this rule (for Madame, always cool and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... doctrine of the nature of disease which ascribed all ailments to excess, deficiency, or ill "concoction" of some one of the four humors (yellow and black bile, blood, and phlegm), had not yet lost its hold on men's convictions, or at least not further than to make them look upon exposure to cold and errors of diet as amply explanatory of all diseases not plainly infectious. The medical ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... is her privilege, and my command.— Don't lose you head, Dubois, at this tight time: Your furthest skill can work but what it may. Fancy that you are merely standing by A shop-wife's couch, say, in the Rue Saint Denis; Show the aplomb and phlegm that you would show Did such a bed ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... sickness at stomach, and a puking of bile, or a discharge of a frothy and viscid phlegm, by hawking, in ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... Maggots survive when all the kernel's gone. This simile shall stand, in thy defence, 'Gainst such dull rogues as now and then write sense. Thy style's the same, whatever be thy theme, As some digestion turns all meat to phlegm. He lyes, dear Ned, who says, thy brain it barren, Where deep conceits, like vermin breed in carrion. Thy stumbling founder'd jade can trot as high As any other Pegasus can fly. So the dull Eel moves nimbler ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... Neither the phlegm on which he prided himself, nor his resolutions, were sufficient, however, to keep the peace, or to avoid undignified contentions with his wife. Some months later he addressed her a letter, which, although bearing ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun and stars, earth and water. These stand and wait to render him a peculiar service. But there is some obstruction or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist that he could report ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... knows I am not of those fools That gets tired of a woman who is kind to them, Yet you know not how stifled you render me By learning me so well, how I long to see An unpractised girl under your clever phlegm, A soul not so ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers

... him feel as if the bottom had dropped out of life itself. He can neither eat, digest his food, walk, sit, rest, work, take pleasure, exercise, or sleep. His body is the victim of innumerable ills. His tongue, his lips, his mouth are dry and parched, his throat full of slime and phlegm, his stomach painful, his bowels full of gas, and he regards himself as cursed of God—a walking receptacle of woe. To physician, wife, husband, children, employer, employee, pastor, and friend alike the hypochondriac is a pest, a nuisance, a chill and almost a curse, and, poor creature, these ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... of human nature are in themselves vital and profitable; when they are blamed, they are only to be blamed relatively, not absolutely. This holds true of the Saxon's phlegm as well as of the Celt's sentiment. Out of the steady humdrum habit of the creeping Saxon, as the Celt calls him,—out of his way of going near the ground,—has come, no doubt, Philistinism, that plant of essentially ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... and by the little which is afterward gained in Japon and other places, these people are supported. Even should we go there, we have not that success in business, that concord among ourselves, or that patience and phlegm, and we seek greater profits. Necessarily, we must greatly increase the price of the goods—more especially as the Chinese are very shrewd traders; and on seeing our ship there laden with money, and knowing that it could not return empty, they may raise the prices at their pleasure. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... time. Baptiste junior, with no lack either of decorum or refinement, contributed greatly to the amusement of the evening, being presented under the name of my Lord Bristol, English diplomat, en route to the Council of Prague. His disguise was so perfect, his accent so natural, and his phlegm so imperturbable, that many persons of the Saxon court were completely deceived, which did not in the least astonish me; and I thereby saw that Baptiste junior's talent for mystification had lost nothing since the time when I had been so highly ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... phlegm, with which her unmerited degradation was supported by the lady Anne, has in it something at once extraordinary and amusing. There is indeed a tradition that she fainted on first receiving the information that her marriage was likely ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... ears and those with smooth ones? For we, even, hear differently when we partially stop up the ears, from what we do when we use them naturally. The sense of smell also varies according to differences in 51 animals, since even our sense of smell is affected when we have taken cold and the phlegm is too abundant, and also when parts around our head are flooded with too much blood, for we then avoid odors that seem agreeable to others, and feel as if we were injured by them. Since also some of the animals are ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... thy cave of cloud, And wave thy purple wings, Now all thy figures are allowed, And various shapes of things. Create of airy forms a stream; It must have blood and nought of phlegm; And though it be a walking dream, Yet let it like an odor rise To all the senses here, And fall like sleep upon their eyes, Or music on ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... drawing-room, to witness the powers of Alexis. We were all of us sceptical, one of our party so incurably so that after each exhibition of clairvoyance given by Alexis, and each exclamation of Mr. Townsend's, "There now, you see that?" he merely replied, with the most imperturbable phlegm, "Yes, I see it, but I don't believe it." The clairvoyant power of the young man consisted principally in reading passages from books presented to him while under the influence of the mesmeric sleep, into which he had been thrown ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... a moment with a fervor quite unlike his usual phlegm, and said, "That's me, old man. Dickens ain't no slouch. You can count on him pretty much all ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... Neapolitan. She is in a continual flutter of movement, as if her body were threaded with trembling wires. She uses a great deal of gesture. She is noisy about nothing. She is vivacious at all costs, and would rather suggest hysteria than British phlegm. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... did he not understand the gravity of the situation? Was it with him phlegm or contempt of danger, courage or indifference? Was his life valueless in his eyes, and, according to the Eastern expression, "an hotel for five days," which, whether one is willing or not, must be left the sixth? At any rate, the smile on his ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... Dutchers, as they were called, to distinguish them from the original or Low Dutch colonists, were a very peculiar people. They possessed all the gravity of the latter, without any of their phlegm; and like them, the High Dutchers were industrious, honest, and economical, Fritz, or Frederick Hartmann, was an epitome of all the vices and virtues, foibles and excellences, of his race. He was passionate though silent, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... barge is the Pickford van of Holland. Here we see some of the secret of the Dutch deliberateness. A country which must wait for its goods until a barge brings them has every opportunity of acquiring philosophic phlegm. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... an imbecile! Too much phlegm, too much phlegm! Your words wouldn't convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what they mean at all? Thus," he cried, and casting his round hat from him in a broad gesture, he took his stand at M. Leandre's side, and ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... began the attack. Had his cavalry been present, he would have thrown two regiments of dragoons into a bottom, that was on the right of his infantry, to cover its flank; but the Prince of Holstein, whose phlegm was invincible, did not come up till an hour after the action had begun. According to the regulations that had been agreed on, the attacks were to be made at the same time, and the result ought to have been that either the King or Zieten should penetrate through the centre ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... his lips into a sneer, and turn up his absurd unmeaning eyes in dubious disbelief, when he hears aught which he thinks it would imply sagacity to discredit! Such persons imagine, that to be a great doubter implies wisdom; whereas, in their case, it has its origin in constitutional phlegm and stupidity. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... 'countenances,' is, I think, mistaken both in the thought conveyed—(for it was never a popular belief that the stars governed men's countenances,) and in the usage, which requires an antithesis of the blood,—or the temperament of the four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but, to be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies,—and the countenances which are in our power really, though from flattery we bring them into a no less apparent dependence on the sovereign, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... a moment, and distinctly heard the gurgling noise produced by the phlegm, which is termed with wild poetical accuracy, by the peasantry—the "dead rattle," or "death rattle," because it is the immediate and ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton



Words linked to "Phlegm" :   sluggishness, languor, stolidity, lethargy, apathy, sputum, indifference, inertia, phlegmatical, inactivity, mucous secretion



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