Meanings
- obsoleteuncountableA blackish matter, resembling coffee grounds due to hemorrhage, emitted in severer cases of yellow fever.
A fever, with yellow skin and black vomit in some of the cases, appeared among a party of forty men.
1833, chapter 2, in Cyclopædia of practical medicine, page 2952 more examples
Black vomit is nothing but a hœmorrhage from the stomach, and may exist in any degree, from a few particles of blood mixed, as it were, into a quantity of light glairy fluid, presenting the appearance of floating dark specks or flocculi, to that of a rapid and profuse discharge of pure red blood.
1854 May 28, Daniel Drake, The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, page 369On the third or fourth day, or later, the vomited matters..begin to contain blood..and they soon assume..a coffee-ground character, constituting the so-called black vomit.
1876, John S. Bristowe, A treatise on the theory and practice of medicine, published 1878, page 199 - obsoleteuncountableThe disease of yellow fever itself.
Synonyms & antonyms
nouncaused by a flavivirus transmitted by a mosquito
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
black vomit. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/black%20vomit
“black vomit.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/black%20vomit. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “black vomit,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/black%20vomit.
Source: black vomit on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.