spleen

From Middle English splene, splen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman espleen and Old French esplein, esplen, from Latin splēn (“milt”), from Ancient Greek σπλήν (splḗn, “the spleen”). Partially displaced the native English term milt.

• enPR: splēn, IPA^(key): /spliːn/
• Rhymes: -iːn

spleen (countable and uncountable, plural spleens)

1. (anatomy, immunology) In vertebrates, including humans, a ductless vascular gland, located in the left upper abdomen near the stomach, which destroys old red blood cells, removes debris from the bloodstream, acts as a reservoir of blood, and produces lymphocytes.
2. (archaic, except in the set phrase "to vent one's spleen") A bad mood; spitefulness.
   • Alexander Pope

     In noble minds some dregs remain, / Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain.

   • 1843, “A Voice from Trinidad”, in Colonial Magazine and Commercial-maritime Journal, page 465:

     Too many, however, who might take an honourable stand, fear the petty spleen of the plantocracy; preferring the most disgusting adulation, to the blessing of him ready to perish.

3. (obsolete, rare) A sudden motion or action; a fit; a freak; a whim.
   • Shakespeare

     A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways.

     Brief as the lightning in the collied night; That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth

4. (obsolete) Melancholy; hypochondriacal affections.
   • Alexander Pope

     Bodies changed to various forms by spleen.

   • Wordsworth

     There is a luxury in self-dispraise: / And inward self-disparagement affords / To meditative spleen a grateful feast.

5. A fit of immoderate laughter or merriment.
   • Shakespeare

     Thy silly thought enforces my spleen.

• milt (now chiefly of animals); lien (uncommon)

• splenomegaly

• → French: spleen
• → German: Spleen

spleen (third-person singular simple present spleens, present participle spleening, simple past and past participle spleened)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To dislike.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Bishop Hacket to this entry?)

• pensel, plenes

Borrowed from English spleen in the 19th century.

• IPA^(key): /splin/

• Audio

  (file)

spleen m (plural spleens)

1. bad mood, melancholy

   J'ai le spleen.

• bourdon, cafard, dépression, ennui, hypocondrie, langueur, neurasthénie

• “spleen” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).