humoral

H4U1M3O1R1A1L1

adjective

Relating to the body fluids or humours.

UncommonScrabble 12

Meanings

adjectivehumoral (not comparable)

alternative humoural

  1. not comparablemedicineRelating to the body fluids or humours.

    The usual kind of excitation met with in the pancreas is purely humoral and there is no reason to assume that any form of nervous activity is involved in it.

    2015, G. H. Parker, Humoral Agents in Nervous Activity
    2 more examples

    Both the apocryphal belief in pre-transplant cross-match screening to discard active humoral immune response against the donor and the lack of sensible and reliable markers for detecting AMR give explanation to the surprising fact that AMR was nearly neglected in human renal transplantation during years.

    2009, Giuseppe Remuzzi, Stefano Chiaramonte, N. Perico, Humoral Immunity in Kidney Transplantation, page 118

    Thus, the demonstration of the presence of: a thymic-lymphocytosis promoting factor in mice (Metcalf, 1958); a humoral lymphocyte stimulating factor in the serum of irradiated rats (Ito and Weinstein, 1963); a thymic lymphopoietic factor, "thymosin" (Goldstein et al., 1966); and a lymphocytosis inducing factor in the plasma of rats treated with antilymphocyte serum (Rakowitz et al., 1972) lend support to this hypothesis. Several other reports in the literature suggest the presence of humoral agents regulating leukocyte numbers.

    2012, Joseph Lobue, Albert S. Gordon, Humoral Control of Growth And Differentiation, page 52
  2. historicalnot comparablePertaining to humorism. (The theory of the influence of the humors in the production of disease.)

    The planets are used as symbols in Culpeper's humoral philosophy, and the way he uses them had developed within hermetic philosophy.

    2021, Stephen Taylor, The Humoral Herbal: In Good Humour, page 6
    2 more examples

    By predicating conception on differing humoral temperaments of men and women, medical theorists justified their own subjugation of women by cultivating a distinct female humorality responsible for behavior.

    2019, Amy Kenny, Humoral Wombs on the Shakespearean Stage, page 4

    It is now well recognized that Gelenic humoral theory underpinned early modern medical practices and the maintenance of health, an antique discourse used to describe interiority and emotion: medical practitioners understood "temperament" or psychological and physiological bodily syestems according to a subject's individual balance of four essential humors—yellow bile (or choler), black bile (or melancholy), phlegm, and blood.

    2021, Amy Kenny, Kaara L. Peterson, “Introduction—Everyday Humoralism”, in Amy Kenny, Kaara L. Peterson, editor, Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance, page 2

Origin

  1. Latinhūmor
  2. Medieval Latinhūmorālis
  3. Middle Frenchhumoral
  4. Middle Englishhumerale
  5. Englishhumoral

From Middle English humerale, humorale, humoural, from Middle French humoral and Medieval Latin hūmorālis, from Latin hūmor. By surface analysis, humor + -al.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Finnish humoraalinen
  • humoraalinenrelating to the body fluids
Cite this entry
APA

humoral. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humoral

MLA

“humoral.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humoral. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “humoral,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humoral.

Source: humoral on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.