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BURNING PHLEGM

3/8/2018

2 Comments

 
I'll admit it: I said fleg-um for the first sixteen years of my life. Properly pronounced flem​, phlegm is the term for mucus that you cough up. But to understand its etymology, you need to understand humorism. This has nothing to do with comedy; humorism is actually an ancient and inaccurate medical belief conceptualized by Hippocrates which states that there are four fluids in the human body: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Phlegm occurs when you have a cold, so obviously it's caused by too much heat. So this all comes from the Ancient Greek word phlegma, which described that cold, wet humor (this, by the way, through Old French fleume and Latin phlegma). Back to phlegma. Because of the "heat" theory, it simply meant "inflammation" earlier on, and before that, it meant "burn" as phlegein. This is from phlox, which meant "flame", and is ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root bhleg​, or "to shine".
2 Comments
Abhishek
8/7/2021 08:37:35 am

"...humorism. This has nothing to do with comedy..."

I think there is a link between the theory of the humours and the word 'humour' in its modern sense, as in 'sense of humour'. Originally, a pleasantly disposed person, one whose humours (fluids) were well balanced, was said to have or feel 'a sense of good humour'. This expression was modified to become 'a good sense of humour', meaning 'witty' or 'funny'. Eventually, humour just meant comedy.

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Elaine Luther
5/12/2022 09:44:20 pm

Your articles are interesting and useful. Won't you please add to each page, how you would like to be cited?

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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