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''bilious'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔

bilious - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

bilious (comparative more bilious, superlative most bilious)

  • Of or pertaining to something containing or consisting of bile.
  • Resembling bile, especially in color.
    • ✤ Does money fail?—come to my mint—coin paper,
      Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed
      To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
      In emulation of her vestal whiteness.      1
    • ✤ His complexion was pale, not of that deadly pallor which is a kind of neutral beauty, but of a bilious, yellow hue; his colorless hair was short and scarcely extended beyond the circle formed by the hat around his head, and his light blue eyes seemed destitute of any expression.2
    • ✤ The business-center of Schoenstrom took up one side of one block, facing the railroad. It was a row of one-story shops covered with galvanized iron, or with clapboards painted red and bilious yellow.3
    • ✤ A beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which she lay in the center of a large dark room and felt her face expand until it filled the whole room, becoming a formless mass while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up the chimney.4
  • (pathology) Suffering from real or supposed liver disorder, especially excessive secretions of bile.
    • ✤ Perry tells me that Mr. Cole never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but he is bilious —Mr. Cole is very bilious.5
  • Peevishly ill-humored, irritable or bad tempered; irascible.
    • ✤ Synonyms: choleric, irascible, peevish, testy, cranky, splenetic
    • ✤ Antonyms: pleasant, amiable, good-natured, genial, even-tempered
    • ✤ The glorified spirit of a great statesman and philosopher dawdling, like a bilious old Nabob at a watering-place, over quarterly reviews and novels—dropping in to pay long calls—making excursions in search of the picturesque!6
    • ✤ The boarders, sharp-tongued bilious widows, pursued the only man in the establishment, a mild, bald creature who worked in La Samaritaine […]7

Etymology

From French bilieux, from Latin bīliōsus (“full of bile”), from bīlis (“bile”) + -ōsus (“full of”).

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈbɪl.i.əs/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (General American) IPA: /ˈbɪl.jəs/, /ˈbɪl.i.əs/
  • Rhymes: -ɪliəs, -ɪljəs

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

  1. 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts: ↩

  2. 1845, Alexandre Dumas, chapter 31, in Twenty Years After: ↩

  3. 1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 3, in Main Street: ↩

  4. 1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, prologue: ↩

  5. 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume II, chapter 7: ↩

  6. 1830 January, Thomas Macaulay, “[Review of] Southey’s Colloquies on Society”, in The Edinburgh Review, page 536: ↩

  7. 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days: ↩