PHLEGM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Phlegm

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/flɛm/ Listen

noun

Phlegm n.

One of the four humors of which the ancients supposed the blood to be composed. See Humor.

(Physiol.) Viscid mucus secreted in abnormal quantity in the respiratory and digestive passages.

(Old Chem.) A watery distilled liquor, in distinction from a spirituous liquor.

Sluggishness of temperament; dullness; want of interest; indifference; coldness. "They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm."

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Etymology of 'Phlegm'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Phlegm" Quotes from Famous Books

... at me 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

... his own voice startled him. He had no notion that he was so hysterical. Promptly his British phlegm throttled the demonstration. He was rather ashamed ...

— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... 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

... difference of the trees [from whose flowers it is produced]; how else could it remove the three-fold disorders? [Footnote: I.e. those affecting the three "humours" of the body, i.e. vâyu 'wind,' pitta 'bile,' and kapha 'phlegm.' Certain flavours of the honey counteract one disorder and others another. The Sušruta thus describes honey (vol. i. p. 185): "When cooked it removes the three-fold disorders, but when raw or sour it causes ...

— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin

... results from this particular happy 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

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