choler

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English colre, also coler and colere,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French colre and Anglo-Norman colere,^[2][5][4] and directly borrowed from Latin cholera.^[5][2] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the second quarter of the 12th century, as one of the four humours.^[6] The English spelling was changed to choler in the 16th and 17th centuries in imitation of the Latin.^[4] The Latin noun, which meant a bilious disease, is from Ancient Greek χολέρα (kholéra),^[3][7][8] from χολή (kholḗ, “bile”).^[7][3][8] In late Latin it took over the senses of its Greek source, bile and anger, and became the name of one of the humours.^[9][8][10] Klein and the American Heritage Dictionary trace the Greek noun to Proto-Indo-European *ǵhel- (“to shine; yellow, green”),^[7][11] which would relate it to gall and yellow.^[7] The same Latin noun was borrowed into Middle Dutch kōlre (“anger, rage”), Middle Low German cōlre and Middle High German kolre.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

An illness, probably nausea, attributed to overeating: before 1382, in the early version of the Wycliffite Bible, translating the Latin of the Vulgate.^[5] Barnhart also starts with this digestive disorder, in the same text.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From before 1393, in Gower, the word was mainly the term for one of the four cardinal humours of ancient and medieval physiology, identified with bile.^[5][2] Chaucer uses it about 1390.^[4] Excess of this humour was supposed to make a person irascible,^[12][5][4] and that belief produced the sense "anger", first recorded in 1530, in Palsgrave.^[5][9][13] Johnson (1755) still lists the three steps side by side: the bile, the humour that causes irascibility, and anger or rage.^[14] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Collins now label the physical senses archaic or obsolete, which leaves anger as the living meaning.^[3][15]

Timeline

• before 1382 – an illness attributed to overeating (obsolete by 1611).^[5]
• before 1393 – one of the four humours, identified with bile.^[5] Barnhart dates this to about 1390, in Chaucer.^[4]
• before 1398 – excess of this humour as a cause of disease, and the disease itself.^[5]
• before 1400 – an abnormal, dark form of the humour, called choler adust.^[5]
• c. 1475 – adjective, choleric (rare, obsolete by 1662).^[5]
• 1530 – anger, rage, irascibility.^[5]
• 1729 – a disease of pigs (rare, obsolete).^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Anger or ill temper; a readiness to become angry: Each fresh insult raised the old colonel's choler.^[15][3][5]
2. (archaic) yellow bile, one of the four humours of old physiology, thought to cause irascibility.^[15][3][5]
3. (obsolete) Bile, or biliousness.^[15][3][13]

Related words

• cholera
• choleric
• melancholy
• gall
• yellow
• chlorine

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins