Well-humored

noun
1.
a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement:
the humor of a situation.
2.
the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical:
He is completely without humor.
3.
an instance of being or attempting to be comical or amusing; something humorous:
The humor in his joke eluded the audience.
4.
the faculty of expressing the amusing or comical:
The author’s humor came across better in the book than in the movie.
5.
comical writing or talk in general; comical books, skits, plays, etc.
6.
humors, peculiar features; oddities; quirks:
humors of life.
7.
mental disposition or temperament.
8.
a temporary mood or frame of mind:
The boss is in a bad humor today.
9.
a capricious or freakish inclination; whim or caprice; odd trait.
10.
(in medieval physiology) one of the four elemental fluids of the body, blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, regarded as determining, by their relative proportions, a person’s physical and mental constitution.
11.
any animal or plant fluid, whether natural or morbid, as the blood or lymph.
verb (used with object)
12.
to comply with the humor or mood of in order to soothe or make content or more agreeable:
to humor a child.
13.
to adapt or accommodate oneself to.
Idioms
14.
out of humor, displeased; dissatisfied; cross:
The chef is feeling out of humor again and will have to be treated carefully.

humor hu·mor (hyōō’mər)
n.

A body fluid, such as blood, lymph, or bile.

Aqueous humor.

Vitreous humor.

One of the four fluids of the body, blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile, whose relative proportions were thought in ancient and medieval physiology to determine a person’s disposition and general health.

A person’s characteristic disposition or temperament.

An often temporary state of mind; a mood.

humor
(hy’mər)

See aqueous humor.

See vitreous humor.

One of the four fluids of the body—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile—whose relative proportions were thought in ancient and medieval medicine to determine general health and character.

Our Living Language : Doctors in ancient times and in the Middle Ages thought the human body contained a mixture of four substances, called humors, that determined a person’s health and character. The humors were fluids (humor means “fluid” in Latin), and they differed from each other in being either warm or cold and moist or dry. Each humor was also associated with one of the four elements, the basic substances that made up the universe in ancient schemes of thought. Blood was the warm, moist humor associated with the element fire, and phlegm was the cold, moist humor associated with water. Black bile was the cold, dry humor associated with the earth, and yellow bile was the warm, dry humor associated with the air. Illnesses were thought to be caused by an imbalance in the humors within the body, as were defects in personality, and some medical terminology in English still reflects these outmoded concepts. For example, too much black bile was thought to make a person gloomy, and nowadays symptoms of depression such as insomnia and lack of pleasure in enjoyable activities are described as melancholic symptoms, ultimately from the Greek word melancholia, “excess of black bile,” formed from melan-, “black,” and khole, “bile.” The old term for the cold, clammy humor, phlegm, lives on today as the word for abnormally large accumulations of mucus in the upper respiratory tract. Another early name of yellow bile in English, choler, is related to the name of the disease cholera, which in earlier times denoted stomach disorders thought to be due to an imbalance of yellow bile. Both words are ultimately from the Greek word chole, “bile.”

humor definition

An archaic term for any fluid substance in the body, such as blood, lymph, or bile.

Note: Physicians in the Middle Ages believed that four principal humors — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — controlled body functions and that a person’s temperament resulted from the humor that was most prevalent in the body. Sanguine people were controlled by blood, phlegmatic people by phlegm, choleric people by yellow bile (also known as “choler”), and melancholic people by black bile (also known as “melancholy”).

see: out of sorts (humor)