fellifluous

English

Etymology

From Latin fellifluus, from fel (“gall”) + fluere (“to flow”).

Adjective

fellifluous (comparative more fellifluous, superlative most fellifluous)

1. (uncommon) Full of bile or gall; audacious.
   • 1795, Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, translated by William Hodgson, The System of Nature: Or, The Laws of the Moral and Physical World:

     Truth never reveals itself either to the enthusiast smitten with his own reveries; to the fellifluous fanatic enslaved by his prejudices; to the vain glorious mortal puffed up with his own presumptuous ignorance […]

   • 1924, Ben Hecht, The Kingdom of Evil: A Continuation of the Journal of Fantazius Mallare, page 48:

     Its claws scratch at the back of his eyeballs and cause him to see visions, to shriek with fevers, to choke in the embrace of fetid and fellifluous chimeras […]

   • 1950 [5th century CE], Caelius Aurelianus, translated by I. E. Drabkin, On Acute Diseases and On Chronic Diseases, page 417:

     The disease of cholera, according to some, derives its name from the flow of bile that takes place from mouth and bowels, cholera being, so to speak, ‘the fellifluous disease.’

   • 2007, Dannie Abse, The Presence, →ISBN, page 150:

     Behind a counter two young women, both evidently Asian, served a queue including a tipsy fellifluous Irishman.

   • 2022, Pierre Legrand, Negative Comparative Law: A Strong Programme for Weak Thought, →ISBN, page 375:

     What could ever be termed defeatist or pessimistic – what could ever be called fellifluous – about such ideas?

Further reading

• “fellifluous”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.