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Spleen

//spliːn// noun, verb

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    In vertebrates, including humans, a ductless vascular gland, located in the left upper abdomen near the stomach, which destroys old red blood cells, removes debris from the bloodstream, acts as a reservoir of blood, and produces lymphocytes. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    a large dark-red oval organ on the left side of the body between the stomach and the diaphragm; produces cells involved in immune responses wordnet
  3. 3
    A bad mood; spitefulness. Compare gall. archaic, countable, uncountable

    "In noble minds some dregs remain, / Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain."

  4. 4
    a feeling of resentful anger wordnet
  5. 5
    A sudden motion or action; a fit; a freak; a whim. countable, obsolete, rare, uncountable

    "A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways. Brief as the lightning in the collied night; That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth"

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  1. 6
    Melancholy; hypochondriacal affections. countable, obsolete, uncountable

    "Bodies changed to various forms by spleen."

  2. 7
    A fit of immoderate laughter or merriment. countable, uncountable

    "By virtue, thou enforcest laughter ; thy silly thought, my spleen"

Verb
  1. 1
    To dislike. obsolete, transitive

    "T. Wentworth ſpleen'd the Bishop"

  2. 2
    To annoy or irritate.

    "There had been a good deal of provocation, we have no doubt, before the republican simplicity, at which Mrs Trollope seems to have been so justly offended, was spleened into speaking of the old woman."

  3. 3
    To complain; to rail; to vent one's spleen. ambitransitive

    "It was satisfactory to a majority of the bolters, but most of the democrats spleened against him."

  4. 4
    To remove the spleen, or, by extension, to gore.

    "Nor did they only take Townes, kill such as made resistance, and rob houses, with the Licentiousnesse and Avarice of Souldiers, but with barbarous Inhumanity spared no age nor modesty; tyrannizing over the Rest and Monuments of the dead, which they spleened as much as the Living;"

  5. 5
    To excise or remove.

    "That will be how we lose what we have gained, The incremental rapture at the core, Spleened of the belly's thick placental wrath, And the seed's roar."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English splene, splen, from Anglo-Norman espleen and Old French esplein, esplen, from Latin splēn (“milt”), from Ancient Greek σπλήν (splḗn, “the spleen”). Doublet of lien. Partially displaced the native English term milt.

Etymology 2

From Middle English splene, splen, from Anglo-Norman espleen and Old French esplein, esplen, from Latin splēn (“milt”), from Ancient Greek σπλήν (splḗn, “the spleen”). Doublet of lien. Partially displaced the native English term milt.

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