Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories Author:Wilfred Funk ex. of item listed for "Humor" : — We borrowed it from latin, meaning liquid. The ancient philosophers believed that four liquids entered into the makeup of our bodies, and that our temperment (temperamentum,"mixture") was determined by the proportions of these four fluids,or humors, which they listed as blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile. If yo... more »u had a overplus of blood, the first humor, you were of the optimistic and sanguine temperament (latin sanguis, blood). A generous portion of phlegm, on the other hand made you "phlegmatic", or slow and unexciteable. Too much yellow bile and you saw the world through a "bilious" eye , and since the word "bile" is chole in Latin, you were apt to be choleric and short tempered. The fourth humor, the non-existent black bile, was a little special invention of the ancient physiologists. A too heavy proportion of this made you "melancholy," for in latin melancholia meant " the state of having too much black bile." Any imbalance of these humors, therefore made a person unwell and perhaps eccentric, and, as the years went by, the word humor took on the meaning of "oddness," and a humorous man was one that we now call a crank. And finally the word was applied to those who could provoke laughter at the oddities and the incongruities of life. (Wilfred Funk, Word Origins and their romantic stories)« less