Saturday, January 19, 2008

The Four Humors

The Greeks loved to classify things, personality types included. With modern science and psychology not yet developed, they relied on other ideas to reach conclusions about human behavior. The theory of the four humors is one such example. Fluids, or χυμοι (humoi) in Greek (bet you didn't ever think that humor and humid were related, eh?) were the starting point for an interesting theory on distinct personality types. Originally credited to Hippocrates, other Greeks went on to classify four different personality types. The fluids involved: phlegm, blood, black bile, and yellow bile. Balance is of course the ideal, but life is not always ideal...and from there these personality types emerge.

The English words used to describe the humors mainly have Greek roots.

phlegmatic types are characterized by too much phlegm! This makes them slow and sluggish. They are also considered peaceful, agreeable types, if sometimes a bit on the unemotional side. From Greek, Latin, phlegma (φλέγμα).

sanguine people are really cheerful! When first encountering the word "sanguine", I instantly recognized the root as "sanguis", Latin for blood, but didn't understand where the correlation to cheerful lay. Well, the Greeks sure saw it. Nice, ruddy people, overrun with blood makes them passionate, confident, and optimistic.

note of interest: the Greek word for blood is αιμα (haima) (think hemophiliac...); here we've got the Latin root.

melancholy people tend toward sadness. Thanks, black bile, for putting such a glum bent on the world. From Greek μελας, melas, "black", + χολη, kholé, "bile".

choleric types can be downright temperamental, irritable, and aggressive. This is due to the spleen, producer of yellow bile (or choler), and the seat of ill temper in classical thought.

additional note: choleric types are interchangeably called splenetic types.

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