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''bile'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''bile'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320115623-00-⌔

bile - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

bile (usually uncountable, plural biles)

  • A bitter brownish - yellow or greenish-yellow secretion produced by the liver, stored in the gall bladder, and discharged into the duodenum where it aids the process of digestion.
    • ✤ Synonyms: bili-, chole-; gall (archaic)
  • Bitterness of temper; ill humour; irascibility.
  • Either of two of the four humours, black bile or yellow bile, in ancient and medieval physiology.
    • ✤ Hyponyms: black bile, yellow bile
    • ✤ I shall tire of my Journal if it is to contain nothing but biles and plasters and unguents.1
    • ✤ He spake out of the Pythonesse, Act. 16. 17. brought downe fire from heauen, and consumed Iobs sheepe 7000. and his seruants, raised a storme, strooke the house wherein his sonnes and daughters feasted with their elder brother, smote the foure corners of it, with the ruine whereof they all were destroyed, and perished: and ouerspread the body of that holy Saint their father with botches[t] and biles from the sole of his foot to the crowne of his head.2

Noun

bile (plural biles)

  • (obsolete) A boil (kind of swelling).3

Verb

bile (third-person singular simple present biles, present participlebiling or bileing, simple past and past participle biled)

  • Pronunciation spelling of boil.
    • ✤ We pretty near biled ourselves and Miss Euly done got her bes’pink apron stained, an’ I dropped Sis Suky’s big kitchen spoon in de hogshead of sand […]4

Pronunciation

  • enPR: bīl, IPA: /baɪl/, /ˈbaɪ.əl/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -aɪl

Etymology 1

From Middle French bile, from Latin bīlis (“bile”).

Partially displaced native English gall (“bile”), from Middle English galle, from Old English galla, ġealla (“gall, bile”).

Etymology 2

Obsolete form of boil. Akin to Dutch buil and German Beule, all from Proto-Germanic ﹡būlǭ.

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1890, Walter Scott, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott ‎: ↩

  2. 1616, Alexander Roberts, A Treatise of Witchcraft ‎: ↩

  3. “bile”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC. ↩

  4. 1912, Stella George Stern Perry, Melindy, page 130: ↩

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Secondary

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