bilious
/ˈbɪlɪəs
/adjective
1Affected by or associated with nausea or vomiting: a bilious attack...
- Two day old full term male with bilious vomiting and a palpable right lower quadrant mass.
- The usual onset is 10 to 12 days of age, with presenting symptoms of gastric retention, bilious vomiting, ileus, abdominal distention and bloody stools.
- When a neonate develops bilious vomiting, one should suspect a surgical condition.
Synonyms
nauseous, sick, queasy, nauseated, green about the gills, liverish
North American informal barfy
rare qualmish
1.1(Of a colour) lurid or sickly: a bilious yellow hue...
- On the walls, liverish or bilious colours such as some shades of green can be difficult, as can very bright fluorescent shades.
- All the big noses and bilious hues of the two worlds seemed to have made appointments there.
- Overall, though, this is a fine car, and so long as you opt for a colour less garish than the test version's bilious yellow, it offers a discreet way to have some motoring enjoyment.
Synonyms
lurid, garish, loud, violent;
sickly, nauseating, distasteful, unattractive
2Spiteful; bad-tempered: his bilious temperament...
- So if there are any splenetic motorists or bilious cyclists out there thinking of penning an angry letter to the Evening Press, listen up.
- This is not Ayckbourn's first assault on the sickness of the celebrity culture: Man of the Moment was an even more bilious attack on media glorification of villains.
- But what is striking is the bilious inclusiveness of its attack on a machine-driven society that not only exploits its workers but robs them of their souls.
Synonyms
bad-tempered, irritable, irascible, tetchy, testy, grumpy, grouchy, crotchety, cantankerous, curmudgeonly, ill-tempered, ill-natured, ill-humoured, peevish, fractious, disagreeable, pettish, crabbed, crabby, waspish, prickly, peppery, touchy, scratchy, crusty, splenetic, shrewish, short-tempered, hot-tempered, quick-tempered, dyspeptic, choleric, liverish, cross-grained
North American informal cranky, ornery
3 Physiology Relating to bile.She developed bilious emesis and bilious aspirates were subsequently returned from her nasogastric tube....
- A nasogastric tube obtained bilious fluid that was hemoccult positive.
- This was a 1 day old full term female that became dusky with the first feeding, after which 40 cc of bilious fluid was aspirated from her stomach via nasogastric tube.
Derivatives
biliously
- I love the headlines like Cow Stuck in Bog, I love the biliously vile and garish colours of headlines in Leisure mixed with pictures placed at jaunty angles.
- There's no critic like a dead critic - a point well proved by this biliously funny adaptation of Thomas Bernhard's 1985 novel about a celebrated music writer, with which the Vienna Burgtheater makes its long-overdue British debut.
- The looming war has already become deeply and biliously ideological.
biliousness
/ noun ...- I ask Mr. Shafer whether this second point explains the biliousness and lack of comparative perspective in his comment on Mr. Sullivan's piece.
- Except for the twenty-four hours of biliousness, slippery guts and hasty exits that follow, it's all good.
- The roots of his biliousness can be traced to his upbringing as the eldest of four sons to Jim and Eileen, an Irish crane driver and his wife, in north London.
Origin
Mid 16th century (in the sense 'biliary'): from Latin biliosus, from bilis 'bile'.