Spleenful
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A quantity of invective.
"Wyndham Lewis is equipped for his task with an amazing vocabulary of diatribe and derision, a spleenful of gall, and sense for the absurd — the monstrous, the Gargantuan, the preposterously incongruous— which, when disciplined, makes his best passages uproariously effective."
- 2 More than one can take.
"But suddenly, inexplicably, I've had a spleenful of it, and I'm going for the kid."
- 1 Full of spleen; spiteful.
"The spleenful Pigeons never could create A prince more proper to revenge their hate: Indeed, more proper to revenge, than save; A king, whom in his wrath the Almighty gave: For all the grace the landlord had allow'd, But made the Buzzard and the Pigeons proud; Gave time to fix their friends, and to seduce the crowd."
Example
More examples"The spleenful Pigeons never could create A prince more proper to revenge their hate: Indeed, more proper to revenge, than save; A king, whom in his wrath the Almighty gave: For all the grace the landlord had allow'd, But made the Buzzard and the Pigeons proud; Gave time to fix their friends, and to seduce the crowd."
Etymology
From spleen + -ful.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.