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Phlegm   /flɛm/   Listen
Phlegm

noun
1.
Apathy demonstrated by an absence of emotional reactions.  Synonyms: emotionlessness, impassiveness, impassivity, indifference, stolidity, unemotionality.
2.
Expectorated matter; saliva mixed with discharges from the respiratory passages; in ancient and medieval physiology it was believed to cause sluggishness.  Synonym: sputum.
3.
Inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy.  Synonyms: flatness, languor, lethargy, sluggishness.



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"Phlegm" Quotes from Famous Books



... Corinne (1807). It is again the history of a woman of genius, beautiful, generous, enthusiastic, whom the world understands imperfectly, and whom her English lover, after his fit of Italian romance, discards with the characteristic British phlegm. The paintings of Italian nature are rhetorical exercises; the writer's sympathy with art and history is of more value; the interpretation of a woman's heart is alive with personal feeling. Madame de Stael's novels are old now, which means that they ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... violently, and who began to see red flashes in the dark waters of the river, rose hastily to fill her lungs with a long breath of air, the papyrus boat had resumed its confident way, and Poeri was handling the scull with the imperturbable phlegm of the allegorical personages who row the barge of Maut on the bassi-relievi and the paintings of the temples. The bank was only a few strokes off; the vast shadow of the pylons and the huge walls ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... lees, etc. Lees and settlings are synonymous dregs. The allusion is to the old physiological system of the four primary humours of the body, viz. blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy (see Burton's Anat. of Mel. i. 1, Sec. ii. 2): "Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen"; Gk. melancholia, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... attacks, and the maledictions of both parties. Intrepid, audacious, his arms crossed, his head high, his eye unblenching, the adventurer heard the muttering and bursting forth of this formidable storm with impassible phlegm, saying to himself: "This ruins all; they may throw me overboard—that is to say, into the open sea; the leap is perilous, though I can swim like a Triton, but I can do no more; this was sure to happen sooner or later; and beside, as ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... at the Base on the sixth day; he said he expectorated some blood at the end of about ten minutes after being shot, and experienced a 'half-choking sensation.' A small quantity of phlegm and occasional clots had been expectorated since. He had walked about a good deal; movement occasioned cough, and ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... to his critical British phlegm that he was surrounded, immersed against his will, in floods of emotion. Among his fellow travellers the French element predominated. Heavens! how they talked—jabbered would be the better word—laughed and ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... brass knocker, and struck thrice. The sound of footsteps came from within, and he knew at once that they were Caterina's. Middle-aged, phlegmatic and solid she had loved both him and Tayoga, despite tricks and teasing, but he knew her very phlegm would keep her from being startled too much. Only an earthquake could shake the ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... you see, surely more sinister Far than the shires that would snatch at her fame; So, when you curse at our present Prime Minister, Calling him every conceivable name, We shall accept 'em with sangfroid and phlegm, as he Gives you this practical proof of his powers, Setting his seal to our sinful supremacy, Seeing he comes from this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... extended homily, with a general assent and tobacco's phlegm, Gower replied to his father's 'You starved manfully?' nodding: 'From Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times helped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... who had formed a council of war, could come to a decision, the Mexican trumpets sounded the charge, and with shout and shot the cavalry bore down upon us, their wild cries, intended to frighten us, contrasting oddly with the silence and phlegm of our people, who stood waiting the opportunity to make the best use of their rifles. Again and again our artillery played havoc amongst the enemy, who, finding his cavalry so unsuccessful in its assaults, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the school-master, doling forth the contents of an ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... capillary nerves which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spring into the tongue and two into the right hand. They hold also that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold: that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm. And that what we vulgarly call rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Farther, that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... much of her, but only this, Don Manuel saw not with my eyes, if e'er He loved that Flanders shape; that lump of earth, And phlegm together. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... a tapestry of a middle age battle field. The chief of the band here is not Chaumette, who has legal qualms,[34175] nor Pache, who cunningly tacks under his mask of Swiss phlegm, but Hebert, another Marat, yet more brutal and depraved, and who profits by the opportunity to "put more coal into the furnace of his Pere Duchesne," striking off 600,000 copies of it, pocketing 135,000 francs for ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... danger was impending owing to the flow of humour having become chronic. Fortunately this humour was not acrid or salt; if it were, phthisis must at once supervene. But the Archbishop's lungs were becoming more and more clogged with phlegm, and a stronger effort of coughing was necessary to clear them. Latterly much of the thick phlegm had adhered to the lungs, and consequently the difficulty of breathing was great. Cassanate declares that he had been able to do no more than to keep the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... have my spouse and I informed the nation, And led you all the way to reformation; Not with dull morals, gravely writ, like those, Which men of easy phlegm with care compose,— Your poets, of stiff words and limber sense, Born on the confines of indifference; But by examples drawn, I dare to say, From most of you who hear and see the play. There are more Rhodophils ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... are only frequent and yellow and not accompanied with pain, there is no cause for anxiety; but if the discharges are green, soon becoming gray, brown and sometimes frothy, having a mixture of phlegm, and sometimes containing food undigested, a physician had ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... they were worn only by the Guards and the Hussars. This Colonel Berkeley was a guardsman. He seemed a strange, tired, languid, drawling creature with a long black cigar thrusting out, like a pole from a bush, amidst that immense moustache. He looked from one to the other of us with true English phlegm, and he betrayed not the slightest surprise when he was told ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... community; and he would not suffer the consideration of such antagonists to come in competition with his schemes of power, affluence, and authority. Nevertheless, low as he had humbled anti-ministerial association, it required all his artifice to elude, all his patience and natural phlegm to bear, the powerful arguments that were urged, and the keen satire that was exercised against his measures and management, by a few members in the opposition. Sir William Wyndham possessed all the energy of elocution; Mr. Shippen was calm, intrepid, shrewd and sarcastic; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... erosion, and salt phlegm, prepare with syrup of violets, wormwood, roses, citron peel, succory, etc. Then make the following purge:—mirabolans, half an ounce; trochisks of agaric, one drachm; make a decoction with the plantain-water, and add syrup of roses lax. three ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... Naevius, every error pass, The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass. Now hear what blessings temperance can bring: (Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing,) First health: The stomach (crammed from every dish, A tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish, Where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar, And all the man is one intestine war) Remembers oft the schoolboy's simple fare, The temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air. How pale, each worshipful and reverend guest Rise from a clergy, or ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... experienced all manner of civility, particularly in regard to crabbed words. On hearing this intelligence, Ursula returned many thanks to her gentle brother as she called me, and Sylvester was so overjoyed that, casting aside his usual phlegm, he said I was the best friend he had ever had in the world, and in testimony of his gratitude swore that he would permit me to give his wife a choomer in the presence of the whole company, which offer, however, met with a very mortifying reception; the company ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... if I showed colossal phlegm Or kept enormous crowds at bay, And sometimes won the D.C.M., It might inspire me for the fray; But, looking back, I do not seem To recollect a single dream In which I did not simply scream ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... those unacquainted with the trick of Eastern riddles. Some further explanation is also required to illustrate the solution itself. The vow of Moses refers to his forty days' fast; the four temperaments—the bile, the atrabile, phlegm, and blood—are represented in the Arabian system of physics by the four elements, which are considered to be connected with them; the figures refer to the numerical power of the abjad, or alphabet; and the enigma itself has been attributed, though ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various

... yours, he's his Son; and he will say, he is no Son to inherit above a shelf of Books: Why did he get him? why was he brought up to write and read, and know these things? why was he not like his Father, a dumb Justice? a flat dull piece of phlegm, shap'd like a man, a reverend Idol in a piece of Arras? Can you lay disobedience, want of manners, or any capital ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... the throat we first see the back part of the tongue, which has a very uneven surface, and which is, as a rule, covered with greyish phlegm. We next notice a hollow space between the tongue and the lid, which is divided by an elastic band forming a little bridge between the two. Next comes the upper free part of the lid, the shape of which greatly varies ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... wise and sovereignly bred To know what mankind is, how 't may be led: He stoop'd unto them, like that wise man, who Rid on a stick, when 's children would do so. For we are easy sullen things, and must Be laugh'd aright, and cheated into trust; Whilst a black piece of phlegm, that lays about Dull menaces, and terrifies the rout, And cajoles it, with all its peevish strength Piteously stretch'd and botch'd up into length, Whilst the tired rabble sleepily obey Such opiate talk, and snore away the day, By all his noise as much their minds relieves, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... the feeling, "Good! Good! That's good". The next morning, he said, it might not seem good at all. This calls to mind the old advice to writers about its being "better to compose with fury and correct with phlegm than to compose with phlegm and correct with fury". The phlegmatic critical attitude interferes considerably with the enthusiastic inventive activity. Give invention free rein for the time being, and come ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... hand for a moment with a fervor quite unlike his usual phlegm, and said, "That's me, old man. Dickens ain't no slouch. You can count on him ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... decanted from the thick Sediment, and then gently distilled in an Alembick in Arena, by which means, there will come over two differing Liquors, one Phlegmatick, the other Oily, {136} which latter swimming on the Phlegm, is to be severed from it. The Phlegm is used as an excellent Resister and Curer of all the Putrefactions of the Lungs and Liver, and it heals all foul Wounds and Ulcers. The Oily part, being diluted with double ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... out of life itself. He can neither eat, digest his food, walk, sit, rest, work, take pleasure, exercise, or sleep. His body is the victim of innumerable ills. His tongue, his lips, his mouth are dry and parched, his throat full of slime and phlegm, his stomach painful, his bowels full of gas, and he regards himself as cursed of God—a walking receptacle of woe. To physician, wife, husband, children, employer, employee, pastor, and friend alike the hypochondriac ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... present in the mind of not a living creature in that school. All rose at the usual hour; all breakfasted as usual; all, without reference to, or apparent thought of their late Professor, betook themselves with wonted phlegm to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... men suspect your story, Speak modestly its history. The traveller, who overleaps the bounds Of probability, confounds; But though men hear your deeds with phlegm, You may with flattery cram them. Hyperboles, though ne'er so great, Will yet come ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... all the charms of skepticism The power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the North of Germany it is stronger than in Central Germany, it is considerably stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter—not to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense middle empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia—namely, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... glutinosity^, mucosity^; spissitude^, crassitude^; lentor^; adhesiveness &c (cohesion) 46. inspissation^, incrassation^; thickening. jelly, mucilage, gelatin, gluten; carlock^, fish glue; ichthyocol^, ichthycolla^; isinglass; mucus, phlegm, goo; pituite^, lava; glair^, starch, gluten, albumen, milk, cream, protein^; treacle; gum, size, glue (tenacity) 327; wax, beeswax. emulsion, soup; squash, mud, slush, slime, ooze; moisture &c 339; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... said, in a weak, plaintive voice, although husky from the phlegm which was fast coagulating in her throat—"Mother, I already have ceased to be of this world; I am dying, dearest mother, fast dying; and oh, thou All—good and AR—merciful Being, against whom I have fearfully sinned, would that the last struggle were now o'er, and that my ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... a eu une reprimande severe publiquement dans le conseil par le Prince d'Orange pour avoir trop balance."—Avaux to De Croissy, Dublin, June 1689. "his mercurial Wit," says Burnet, ii. 4., "was not well suited with the King's phlegm."] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... seems to be twice as heavy as rain-water: Water impregnated with it makes the strongest spirit of salt that I have seen, dissolving iron with the most rapidity. Consequently, two thirds of the best spirit of salt is nothing more than mere phlegm or water. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... The word comes to have this meaning from the theory of the old physiologists that four cardinal humors—blood, choler or yellow bile, phlegm, and melancholy or black bile—determine, by their conditions and proportions, a person's physical and mental qualities. The influence of this theory survives in the application of the terms 'sanguine,' ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... them. Dr. Hickes knew this very well, and therefore, in his answer to this "Book of Rights," where a second part is threatened, like a rash person he desperately crieth, "Let it come." But I, who have not too much phlegm to provoke angry wits of his standard, must tell the author, that the doctor plays the wag, as if he were sure, it were all grimace. For my part, I declare, if he writeth a second part, I will not write another answer; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... upon was the Passions. Alas! said Zadig, how fatal in their Consequences! However, said the Hermit, they are the Winds that swell the Sail of the Vessel. Sometimes, 'tis true, they overset it; but there is no such Thing as sailing without them. Phlegm, indeed, makes Men peevish and sick; but then there is no living without it. Tho' every Thing here below is dangerous, yet ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... peopling Mars or Saturn. The First Lord, equally undemonstrative, announced that the Board of Trade have ordered an inquiry into the circumstances attending the disaster. Pending the result, it would be premature to discuss the matter. Here we have the sublimation of officialism and national phlegm. Of the 1,200 victims who went down in this unarmed passenger ship about 200 were Americans. What will ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... The sluggish phlegm of the Englisman was stirred up a little by the twisted, and somewhat incomprehensible nature ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... Underneath his British phlegm I could see that he was as keen on the thing as Jack Sedgwick. Looking back on it from this distance, it seems odd that two reputable citizens should have adventured into housebreaking so ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... your friendship, and beg a continuation of the same goodness, though I fear the dulness of this will make you immediately repent of it. It is not from Austria that one can write with vivacity, and I am already infected with the phlegm of the country. Even their amours and their quarrels are carried on with a surprising temper, and they are never lively but upon points of ceremony. There, I own, they shew all their passions; and 'tis not long since two coaches, meeting ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... much phlegm, but yet with a degree of feeling and sympathy, which greatly improved my opinion of the worthy judge. Bob also seemed touched. He drew a deep sigh, and gazed at the Alcalde with a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... circumstances. She could have slain Mrs Hensor at that moment. She took the blacks to the veranda of the old Humpey and went to look in the office for antiseptics, lint and bandages. Chen Sing, the Chinese cook, came at her call, and rendered assistance with the bland phlegm of his race. The spear had been pulled out of Oola's arm by the time Lady Bridget came back with the dressings. In her spasms of East End philanthropy she had learned the first principles of surgical ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... no particular examination in that respect. What we have to do is to discover what might have happened without passion, and especially to protect ourselves from being in person overcome by passion or affection. It is indubitable that the most "temperamental'' of the criminalists are the best, for phlegm and melancholy do not carry one through an examination. The lively and the passionate judges are the most effective, but they also have the defects of their virtues. No one will deny that it is difficult ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... Neither the phlegm on which he prided himself, nor his resolutions, were sufficient, however, to keep the peace, or to avoid undignified contentions with his wife. Some months later he addressed her a letter, which, although bearing no date, was evidently written after a prolonged ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... be inferred from their well-known temperament,) while the former appears to be more deliberate and thoughtful, indicating by its elegance and harmony the refining and systematizing influence of education, and partaking of the natural phlegm peculiar to inhabitants in colder regions. While Southern eloquence seemed to endeavor to elicit feeling and passion, Northern orators looked for their success rather to the conviction of the understanding than to the indulgence of the weaker elements of human nature. By pleasing and subtle ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... had," returned Villon with a gulp. "Damn his fat head!" he broke out. "It sticks in my throat like phlegm. What right has a man to have red hair when he is dead?" And he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... generous lion, more civil than arrogant, taking no notice of his vaporing and bravados, after having stared about him, as has been said, turned his back and showed his posteriors to Don Quixote, and with great phlegm and calmness laid himself down again in the cage; which Don Quixote perceiving, he ordered the keeper to give him some blows and provoke him to ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... indifference, quietness, stoicism, composure, insensibility, quietude, tranquillity, immobility, lethargy, sluggishness, unconcern, impassibility, phlegm, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... by the sound and original views which in the first volume he had taken of the national characters throughout Europe. In particular he was the first, and so far as I know the only writer who had noticed the profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character to the English nation. 'English phlegm' is the constant expression of authors when contrasting the English with the French. Now the truth is, that, beyond that of all other nations, it has a substratum of profound passion: and, if we are to recur to the old ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... she brought to Paul Emanuel. Impossible to believe that M. Heger gave her more than one or two of the germs of M. Paul. Personally, I can only see the respectable M. Heger as a man whose very essence was a certain impassivity and phlegm under the appearance of a temperament. Choleric he was, with the superficial and temporary choler of the schoolmaster. A schoolmaster gifted with the most extraordinary, the most marvellous, the most arresting faculty for making faces, a ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... ailments from which the child suffered, the father accused Amy Duny of being a witch, and she was placed in the stocks. Being placed in the stocks, further threats were uttered, and both children were afflicted with fits. Upon recovery they "would cough extremely, and bring up much phlegm and crooked pins, and one time a twopenny nail with a very broad head; which pins (amounting to forty or more), together with the twopenny nail, were produced in court, with the affirmation of the said deponnent that he was present when the said nail was vomited up, and also most of ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... being equal to his phlegm, nothing either moved or confounded him; and he was, as Talleyrand remarked, "a model of an Ambassador, according to which he and Bonaparte wished that all other independent Princes and States would choose their representatives to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... was pure Phlegm, which dropt for about two Hours; a little white unctuous Matter swam on the top ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... is nowadays divided into three parts, before, during and after the war. The lives of most men are split into these three hard and fast sections. And the men who have sojourned in the Valley of the Shadow of Death have emerged, for all their phlegm, their philosophy, their passionate carelessness and according to their several temperaments, not the same as when they entered. They have taken human life, they have performed deeds of steadfast and reckless ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... homogeneous parts are divided into (1) the soft and moist (or fluid), such as blood, serum, flesh, fat, suet, marrow, semen, gall, milk, phlegm, faeces and urine, and (2) the hard and dry (or solid), such as sinew, vein, hair, bone, cartilage, nail, and horn. It would appear from this enumeration that Aristotle's distinction of simple and complex parts ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... phlegm malign gnaw campaign gnash arraign paradigm feign foreign gnu benign diaphragm reign design seignior ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... happened to be for sale, as a result of the failure of its manager. Delobelle mentioned it to Risler, at first very vaguely, in a wholly hypothetical form—"There would be a good chance to make a fine stroke." Risler listened with his usual phlegm, saying, "Indeed, it would be a good thing for you." And to a more direct suggestion, not daring to answer, "No," he took refuge behind such phrases as "I will see"—"Perhaps later"—"I don't say no"—and finally uttered the unlucky words "I must ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Felix of the nature and sentiments of Tod's children, he knew enough to make any but an Englishman uneasy. The fact that he went on eating ham, and said to Clara, "Half a cup!" was proof positive of that mysterious quality called phlegm which had long enabled his country to enjoy the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... searchingly exhibited. There was no change whatever in them, unless it were that a certain light of interest kindled by her question turned to complete and blank indifference. 'Well, as times go, it is not a bad match for her,' he said, with a phlegm which was hardly that ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... and Lady Pinkerton boring a high Foreign Office official very nearly to yawns, and Clare Potter, flushed and gallantly gay, flitting about from person to person (Clare was always restless; she had none of Jane's phlegm and stolidity), and Johnny, putting in a fairly amusing time with his own friends and acquaintances, and Frank Potter talking to Juke about his new parish. Frank, discontented all the war because he couldn't get out to France ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... me for each meal half a pint of "Reinfall"' [marginally, 'which is very good']. 'Sometimes I drink it with my friends. The wine of the country here is also good, and Naumburg beer is very good, though I fancy its pitch fills my chest with phlegm. The devil has spoilt all the beer in the world with his pitch, and the wine with his brimstone. But here the wine is pure, such ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... drawing-room, to witness the powers of Alexis. We were all of us sceptical, one of our party so incurably so that after each exhibition of clairvoyance given by Alexis, and each exclamation of Mr. Townsend's, "There now, you see that?" he merely replied, with the most imperturbable phlegm, "Yes, I see it, but I don't believe it." The clairvoyant power of the young man consisted principally in reading passages from books presented to him while under the influence of the mesmeric sleep, into which he had been thrown by Mr. Townsend, and with which he was previously ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... mean to give in to or indulge a person's whims. But in the Middle Ages "humour" was a word used by writers on philosophy to describe the four liquids which they believed (like the Greek philosophers) that the human body contained. These four "humours" were blood, phlegm, yellow bile (or choler), and black bile (or melancholy). According to the balance of these humours a man's character showed itself. From this belief we get the adjectives—which we still use without any thought of their origin—sanguine ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... must be cured. But, strange to say, new and more serious troubles arise. The posterior nasal passages and the throat are now affected by chronic catarrhal conditions and there is much annoyance from phlegm and mucous discharges which drop into the throat. These catarrhal conditions frequently extend to the mucous ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... kind heart and was profoundly moved by this terrible story, told him by a man like himself, by a soldier whose uniform made him his equal. It was even fortunate for the phlegm of this dandy, that the night wind dried the tears which dimmed ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... to be reproached with any charge of peculiar inhumanity. We had no reason to judge unfavourably of their disposition in this respect. They seem to be a docile, courteous, good-natured people; but, notwithstanding the predominant phlegm of their tempers, quick in resenting what they look upon as an injury, and, like most other passionate people, as soon forgetting it. I never found that these fits of passion went farther than the parties immediately concerned, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... affluence of gesture he was explaining—his treachery! Our nearness to the coast had made the confession necessary. To the blandness of his smile, as he proceeded in his unabashed recital, succeeded a pained expression. We were not accepting the situation with the true phlegm of philosophers; he felt that he had just cause for protest. What possible difference could it make to us whether we were landed at Trouville or at Villerville? But to him—to be accused of betraying two ladies—to allow the whole of the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... unlike an earthquake; then was emitted a cloud of tobacco smoke from that crater, his mouth; then there was a kind of rattle in the throat, as if the idea were working its way up through a region of phlegm; then there were several disjointed members of a sentence thrown out, ending in a cough; at length his voice forced its way in the slow, but absolute tone of a man who feels the weight of his purse, if not of his ideas; every portion of his speech being marked ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... prayer before sun rise, the officer who stood nearest to the head of the bed put a sponge steeped in vinegar to Abou Hassan's nose, who immediately turning his head about, without opening his eyes, discharged a kind of phlegm, which was received in a little golden basin before it fell on the carpet. This was the usual effect of the caliph's powder, the sleep lasting longer or shorter, in proportion to the dose. When Abou Hassan laid down his head ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... the worse physician for that. He must have quoted Horace and Virgil six times at least a propos of his medical inquiries. Horace says, in a poem in which he jeers the Stoics, that even a wise man is out of sort when 'pituita molesta est;' which is, being interpreted, 'when, his phlegm is troublesome.' The Doctor thought it necessary to quote this passage in order to prove that phlegm is troublesome;—a proposition, of the truth of which, I will venture to say, no man on earth ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... High Dutchers, as they were called, to distinguish them from the original or Low Dutch colonists, were a very peculiar people. They possessed all the gravity of the latter, without any of their phlegm; and like them, the High Dutchers were industrious, honest, and economical, Fritz, or Frederick Hartmann, was an epitome of all the vices and virtues, foibles and excellences, of his race. He ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... resemble the white bulls I have seen in Italy, who fulfil with proud composure their daily task. When the driver urges them but a little with the iron point of the stick, they work more actively and obediently; but when he wounds too deeply, their phlegm disappears, and they rush in fury against him who ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... naturally a man of spirit, and his present gravity arose from true wisdom and philosophy, not from any original phlegm in his disposition; for he had possessed much fire in his youth, and had married a beautiful woman for love. He was not therefore greatly pleased with this cold answer of his nephew; nor could he help launching forth into the praises of Sophia, and expressing some wonder ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... go mad. Twice I sprang at him and twice the chain about my legs threw me headlong on that cruel floor. Once he brought the jailer in to whip me, but I took the whipping with such phlegm that it gave him no satisfaction. I told you I had seen Grace only once and ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... human nature are in themselves vital and profitable; when they are blamed, they are only to be blamed relatively, not absolutely. This holds true of the Saxon's phlegm as well as of the Celt's sentiment. Out of the steady humdrum habit of the creeping Saxon, as the Celt calls him,—out of his way of going near the ground,—has come, no doubt, Philistinism, that plant of essentially Germanic growth, flourishing with its genuine ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... annals of Mexico, which are worthy of more detailed examination than we can bestow upon them. The great body of these people live apart from the other races of their countrymen, in small villages, full of ignorance, suspicion, and bigotry, and displaying an apparent phlegm, from which it would seem impossible to arouse them. This phlegmatic temperament lessens the credit of the men with the females, who uniformly prefer the European, or the still more vivacious negro. "The indigenous Mexican is grave, melancholic, silent, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... confusion and despair. One edition of jelly was trickled from pot to pot, another lay upon the floor, and a third was burning gaily on the stove. Lotty, with Teutonic phlegm, was calmly eating bread and currant wine, for the jelly was still in a hopelessly liquid state, while Mrs. Brooke, with her apron over her ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... This the General used as often as desired; but when he held back his head to let it run down, it put him into great distress and almost produced suffocation. When the mixture came out of his mouth some phlegm followed it, and he would attempt to cough, which the Doctor encouraged him to do as much as he could; but without effect—he could ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... king!" exclaimed the Antiquary at the first glance at the contents of his packet, and, surprised at once out of decorum, philosophy, and phlegm, he skimmed his cocked hat in the air, from which it descended not again, being caught in its fall by a branch of the chandelier. He next, looking joyously round, laid a grasp on his wig, which he perhaps ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped; she began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly. Then her eyes dropped, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... don't think I ever scold or fly into a passion. If I spoke warmly, as warmly as I sometimes used to do at Roe-Head, they would think me mad. Nobody ever gets into a passion here. Such a thing is not known. The phlegm that thickens their blood is too gluey to boil. They are very false in their relations with each other, but they rarely quarrel, and friendship is a folly they are unacquainted with. The black Swan, M. Heger, is the only sole veritable exception to this rule (for Madame, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... and Germans, he should silence their complaints, wipe out their memories of national independence, and arouse an enthusiasm that would make them forget their sufferings and losses. Their welcome was of a sort to confirm him in this belief. The peaceful populace of Amsterdam forgot their usual phlegm, and cheered the mighty monarch and his young wife. The Empress entered the city in a gilded carriage with glass sides, and she was met by a guard of honor composed of young men belonging to the first families of Holland. The ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... of Hippocrates and the Dogmatists was that health depended on the proper proportion and action in the body of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, and the four cardinal humours, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The due combination of these was known as crasis, and existed in health. If a disease were progressing favourably these humours became changed and combined (coction), preparatory to the expulsion of the morbid matter ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... publish'd. The superior leaves of holly-trees, dry'd to a fine powder, and drunk in white-wine, are prevalent against the stone, and cure fluxes; and a dozen of the mature berries, being swallow'd, purge phlegm without danger. To which the learned Mr. Ray (in Append. Plant. Angl.) adds a zythogalum, or posset made of milk and beer, in which is boil'd some of the most pointed leaves, for asswaging the torment of the collic, when ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... wonderful instances of escape. The brave sergeant who had led the squad had his left wrist broken by an iron bar, but, knocking down two other assailants, he sprung into a house and bolted the door after him. An heroic German girl, with none of the stolid phlegm attributed to her race, lifted the upper mattress of her bed. The sergeant sprung in and was covered up without a word. There was no time then for plans and explanations. A moment later the door was broken, and a score of ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... the mouth[1] which is noxious to the voice, the phlegm which is destructive to the ..., the pustules of the lungs, the pustule of the body, the loss of the nails, the removal (and) dissolving of old excrement, the skin which is stripped off, the recurrent ague of the body, the food which hardens in a man's body, the food which returns after ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... the command after Butler escaped, seeing the impossibility of an effectual defence, went with a flag to Colonel John Butler, to know what terms he would grant on a surrender; to which application Butler answered, with more than savage phlegm, in two short words, 'The hatchet.' Dennison, having defended the fort till most of the garrison were killed or disabled, was compelled to surrender at discretion. Some of the unhappy persons in the fort were carried away alive; but the barbarous conquerors, to save the trouble ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... quicksilver ribbon of the other rails, the sudden clash as a switch intersects, all the din and fury of this ride, was of a splendor that caused one to look abroad at the quiet, green landscape and believe that it was of a phlegm quiet beyond patience. It should have been dark, rain-shot, and windy; thunder should have ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... which left him a broken man. Years before, in 1882, when we were roaming the Law Courts together, he tapped his chest as he coughed, and seeing my anxious expression he told me that he brought up a good deal of phlegm in the morning, and that strangers who heard him clearing his chest would fancy he was very ill. But he looked so well that I soon dismissed the unpleasant fact, though it returned before his breakdown when I saw he was obliged to cancel engagements. I heard ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote

... subsist, Nor even in verse become economist. 60 Rest then, my friends; nor, hateful to my eyes, Let Envy, in the shape of Pity, rise To blast me ere my time; with patience wait, ('Tis no long interval) propitious Fate Shall glut your pride, and every son of phlegm Find ample room to censure and condemn. Read some three hundred lines (no easy task, But probably the last that I shall ask), And give me up for ever; wait one hour, Nay not so much, revenge is ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... spending an idle moment over smoke and scandal." He spoke excellent French, and appeared to be quite at his ease, but Brett noticed that Hussein-ul-Mulk held the discarded newspaper upside down. He was smoking a cigarette, lighted the instant before their appearance, and notwithstanding his Oriental phlegm he seemed to be ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... in this manner—they have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the farther end of which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder, and putting fire to it, they draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils like funnels, along with it plenty of phlegm and defluxion from the head. In these theatres, fruits, such as apples, pears, and nuts, according to the season, are carried about to be sold, as ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... this severe remonstrance with his usual phlegm; saying, it contained matter of very great moment; and he would take care that all treaties he made should be for the honour and safety of England. Though he deeply felt this affront, he would not alter his conduct towards ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... decay of appetite, sickness at stomach, and a puking of bile, or a discharge of a frothy and viscid phlegm, by hawking, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... his national phlegm, he was in a state of rather intense excitation. Luck! Enormous luck! And also an augury for the future! She was professing in London for the first time in her life; she had not been in the Promenade for five minutes; and lo! the ideal admirer. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... restless as a Neapolitan. She is in a continual flutter of movement, as if her body were threaded with trembling wires. She uses a great deal of gesture. She is noisy about nothing. She is vivacious at all costs, and would rather suggest hysteria than British phlegm. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... Medicines, this may be added, by the experimenting Physician, that in distill'd waters he will consider and find which of them will afford any virtue, which only phlegm equivalent but to Conduit-water, which of them will keep long, and in perfection, which soon or in what time decay, and spend them accordingly, and in compound distill'd waters, will find cause to lay aside many simples as nothing conducing, or rather weakning ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett

... cave of cloud, And wave thy purple wings, Now all thy figures are allowed, And various shapes of things. Create of airy forms a stream; It must have blood and nought of phlegm; And though it be a walking dream, Yet let it like an odor rise To all the senses here, And fall like sleep upon their eyes, Or music on ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... the business was to attenuate the lymph, what could be more preposterous than to advise the chalk of Briancon, coral, antihecticum poterii, and the balm of Canada? As for the turtle-soupe, it is a good restorative and balsamic; but, I apprehend, will tend to thicken rather than attenuate the phlegm. He mentions not a syllable of the air, though it is universally allowed, that the climate of Montpellier is pernicious to ulcerated lungs; and here I cannot help recounting a small adventure which our doctor had with a son of Mr. O—d, merchant in the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... the humoral pathology of Hippocrates. As in the Macrocosm—the world at large there were four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, so in the Microcosm—the world of man's body—there were four humors (elements), viz.,blood, phlegm, yellow bile (or choler) and black bile (or melancholy), and they corresponded to the four qualities of matter, heat, cold, dryness and moisture. For more than two thousand years these views prevailed. In his "Regiment ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... Bell. Just before she reached the inn she encountered Mr. Parmalee himself, taking a constitutional, a cigar in his mouth, and his hands deep in his trousers pockets. He met and greeted his fair betrothed with natural phlegm. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... was, Poluski seemed rather to discern a deep laid purpose behind their unnatural phlegm, yet his suspicions died away when the street began to empty as soon as the prisoners' vehicles and the escort had clattered past. The foot regiment marched off, and within ten minutes Felix was back in his nook, smoking and coffee drinking, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... made you forget their bad rhymes and their bald sentiments. I trust that you will never hear them so sung, with tears upon rugged cheeks, and catchings of the breath from strong men. Dark days will have come again before you hear such a song or see such a sight as that. Let those talk of the phlegm of our countrymen who have never seen them when the lava crust of restraint is broken, and when for an instant the strong, enduring fires of the North glow upon the surface. I saw them then, and if I do not see them now, I ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grace and talent. J.E. then—to the eye of a common observer at least—seemeth made up of contradictory principles.—The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence—the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his brain, J.E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier down of every thing that has not stood the test of age and experiment. With a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... my fine fellow," said the old soldier, continuing his preparations with the phlegm natural to him; "one of the most essential qualities in arms is sang-froid. I was like you at your age; but after the third or fourth sword-blow I received, I understood that I was on the wrong road, and I returned to the right path. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... the meeting adjourned as soon as the results of the election had been read, and slipped away in the turmoil that immediately followed, without a word to any one. He was in truth not bewildered—because he had too much natural poise and phlegm—but he was surprised by the suddenness of it all, and wanted to think before talking with others. So he took advantage of the mutual bickerings and recriminations which seemed the order of the day, to get back to his office, and there he sat, studying ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... Italy, and Peter picked things up with judgment, and Leslie paid for them with phlegm. They picked up not only carved olive-oil tanks and well-heads and fifteenth-century iron-work gates from ancient and impoverished gardens, but a contemporarily copied Della Robbia fireplace, and ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... his right hand, by the appellation of Ya frow, and with his own fingers filling a clean pipe, presented it to Mynheer Allucio, the lover. The rest of the economy of the piece was in the same taste; which was so agreeable to the audience, that they seemed to have shaken off their natural phlegm, in order ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... given full scope to the play of this small artillery of city wit, by halting his stately pace, and viewing grimly, first the one assailant, and then the other, as if menacing either repartee or more violent revenge. But phlegm or prudence got the better of his indignation, and tossing his head as one who valued not the raillery to which he had been exposed, he walked down Fleet Street, pursued by ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Herbert Dorrance's constitutional phlegm was a valuable ally in the very contracted quarters into which this question drove him, but his sister was his deliverer. Affecting forgetfulness of the letter and its contents, he glanced down one page, Mrs. Aylett leaning upon his arm, and reading ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... knows what he is about, no doubt," replies Carlton with true English phlegm; "he has made his plan, and I suppose the cavalry have been scouting. It's their business who have got the command to arrange the march and the attack, and ours to do the fighting. It will be soon ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... effort of nature to bring up any secretion from the lining membrane of the lungs, or from the bronchial tubes, hence it ought not to be interfered with. I have known the administration of syrup of white poppies, or of paregoric, to stop the cough, and thereby to prevent the expulsion of the phlegm, and thus to produce either inflammation of the lungs, or bronchitis. Moreover, both paregoric and syrup of white poppies are, for a young child, dangerous medicines (unless administered by a judicious medical man), and ought never to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse



Words linked to "Phlegm" :   mucus, inactiveness, apathy, inertia, inactivity, mucous secretion



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