Word: phlegm
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Characteristics: Modesty, taciturnity, diffidence (women make him blush), singleness of purpose, courage, occasional curtness, phlegm. Elinor Glyn avers he lacks...
...usually in the springtime, affect the pituitary gland. This is an endocrine gland the size of a big pea, located underneath the cerebrum and on about a line with the bridge of the nose. Formerly medicos supposed that it secreted the mucus of the nose. (In Latin pituita means phlegm.) Actually it controls the growth of the bones of body?those of the arms and legs. When it is pathologically oversize, it makes giants of the diseased persons; when undersize it dwarfs them. Irritated temporarily by springtime disease, it, in good theory, makes the sick child grow like a weed...
...troughs at the side that are made to drain off the sur- face water as it splashes up into them are broken in one place, so that the water that flows into them at that end of the tank flows back into the pool again, bringing with it the phlegm that has been spit into the trough by the swimmers. On one occasion I noticed that all the troughs were filled to overflowing, and asked the attendant how it happened that the drains were allowed to become stopped. In reply he treated it as a matter of light importance...
...word humour and its derivation. It was derived from the Latin root meaning moistur and during the Middle Ages came to be applied in the plural to the moistures or juices which on old medical authority made up the constitution of a human being, as bile or phlegm. So a bilious or phlegmatic humour came to mean a certain character or state. This was the sense in which Jonson used "humour," in the play "Every Man out of his Humour...