san·guine (snggwn)
ADJECTIVE:
1.Of the color of blood; red.
Of a healthy reddish color; ruddy: a sanguine complexion.
2.Archaic -
Having blood as the dominant humor in terms of medieval physiology.
Having the temperament and ruddy complexion formerly thought to be characteristic of a person dominated by this humor; passionate.
3.Cheerfully confident; optimistic.
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ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old French sanguin, from Latin sanguineus, from sanguis , sanguin-, blood
OTHER FORMS:
sanguine·ly (Adverb), sanguine·ness or san·guini·ty (Noun)
WORD HISTORY:
The similarity in form between sanguine, "cheerfully optimistic," and sanguinary, "bloodthirsty," may prompt one to wonder how they have come to have such different meanings. The explanation lies in medieval physiology with its notion of the four humors or bodily fluids (blood, bile, phlegm, and black bile). The relative proportions of these fluids was thought to determine a person's temperament. If blood was the predominant humor, one had a ruddy face and a disposition marked by courage, hope, and a readiness to fall in love. Such a temperament was called sanguine, the Middle English ancestor of our word sanguine. The source of the Middle English word was Old French sanguin, itself from Latin sanguineus. Both the Old French and Latin words meant "bloody," "blood-colored," Old French sanguin having the sense "sanguine in temperament" as well. Latin sanguineus was in turn derived from sanguis, "blood," just as English sanguinary is. The English adjective sanguine, first recorded in Middle English before 1350, continues to refer to the cheerfulness and optimism that accompanied a sanguine temperament but no longer has any direct reference to medieval physiology.
Interesting.Never tought it had the meaning of optimism,thanks for sharing your information.
Thank you, very interesting always love to learn...again thank you for posting
also medically used to describe wounds - sanguinous means it's all bloody of course
-serosanguinous means it's prob. got some pus action rocking with the blood as well..
a lil fyi.
One of my favorite words..never realised it had so much meaning...thanks for the info.
Never knew that about that word. Thanks much for the info.
You learn something new everyday.
.Cheerfully confident; optimistic
hmmmmmm, that describes me lol.
*Hugs* Great post hon.
Didn't know all that but I do know that if you bleed to death they say its death through exsanguination (spelling?)
Very intriguing! Thank you, very much.
Blood is tastey... the since of pleasure is in the blood tated in your mouth.
Agreed? :-)
Very intriguing! Thank you, very much.
Blood is tastey... the since of pleasure is in the blood tated in your mouth.
Agreed? :-)
That you for sharing I had no idea but now Im all informed
They say you learn something new everyday, I just did. Thnx =)
Your post is rich with information and intelligence... I thank you....*vanishes*
thank you... i read something about Sanguine earlier and couldn't figure out the spefics of what they were... now, i know. :-)
Wow that was a great post.. Lots of information I never knew... REally enjoyed reading that alot... Can't wait to see what else you post :-)
Thanks for the info. It's interesting how one word can have so many meanings.
Interesting post ...very informative.
learned something new today:)
Wow... I knew a little of that, but never that whole thing..... thank you. It makes you wonder why some loathe "sanguine" vampires and why some are drawn to them lol
You ever notice how threads can start to inter-relate on a purely coincidental nature? I was just in a thread where someone was referring to medieval doctors and bloodletting and then I find a thread on the original belief behind that practice. Quite fortuitious.
Still, good to see we're not promoting the 'health effects' of 'leaching'.
To FelixFelix: Yes, it's a VERY blessed thing we don't advocate that.... there is enough controversy ya know? :P
sanguinaccio is an Italian blood pudding collected when they drain the pigs blood after it has grown from a piglet to three hundred pounds in one year. Like when the kill the bulls, they insert a knife into the back of the bulls brain stem to paralyze the bull so the heart continues to pump out the blood without any struggle. The reason why the heart still pumps out blood I would presume is for the same reason humans who are paralyzed have the vagus nerve going to the heart not through the spinal chord but vis a dif avenue, just the same with war veterans who have wheel chair sex evenb though they are paralyzed fromn the waist down, because the nerve going to the shaft passion extension goes through a different avenue too, and not through the spinal chord. Of course the heart and the shaft are intregal parts of the anatomy that either through design or because of natural selection, a positive mutation, that the ones who had the mutation to have alternate avenues feeding nerves to the heart and the shaft were the ones women felt either safe enough to procxreate with as just as I am interested in girls who don't have great legs because I am tired of chasing the best tail, and anyways, usually the men who get broken necks or get paralyzed from the waist down are not ordinary men, they live a life that puts them in predicaments, and women realize that there was something worth saving in the seed of these fallen warriors before they are off to Valhgalla, or they like the men, because they can safely go about their days and return to their crippled man in her bed do what she wants with his heart and other appendages.
Blood letting is a practice was done for centuries before medicine hit the scene in recent centuries. They drained the blood out of the invalid because they felt it was the evil in the blood which was killing the sicko. It was the cure all cure, of course being drained of blood did nothing of the sort and made it easier for the person to slip into unconsciousness never to return. Even in the past century they still drained blood, sometimes with leaches (leeches?) I dunno sounds like a chinese spice, leechy nut. alright, that is all I had to say, but to connect the blood letting to the previous post of mine which purported that if I was to drain you vampires of the demon in your blood, I could return you to a more pristine state of existence, whereby, you would have no reason to be all goth in full regalia... but I know you all like your demons, so I won't stick a knife in the backs of your neck to paralyze you so you wouldn't flop around like a fish on a boat deck trying to avoid being clubbed, looking up at me with your fish eye lenses next to your primeaval gills like the ones you had when you were a fetus, and looked exactly like a pig fetus, once I have paralyzed you, I could drain you of the evil in your blood that is killing you, drain you of your demons, exorcize your demons and make a nice sanguinaccio blood pudding out of you, getting high off of your bad blood.
well, the italian comes ffrom the Latin, I don't know if French is based on the Latin, or perhaps it is a borrowed word from the French? Don't know the origin other than what the lead on this thread indicated. Thanx for the support.
As the old saying goes......... learn something new everyday.
I love learning about the origins of words. Thanks for your post.
Thanks for the info. I always wondered what the reference was. When I looked it up, it didn't make much sense. Very odd that the different references have such different definitions.
I've heard about the term "sanguinary" being used towards the four humors in physiology but didn't realize difference between "sanguinary" and "sanguine". I love learning something new everyday - thank you for sharing your information! :-) Blessed Be.

Humans have a habit of bastardizing things. One word has many meanings instead of the orginal. Blood letting is the meaning, however it's done.
I thought it was only the idiots in Europe who used leaches for healing in the 20th century.
Gregory Peck's father worked in an all night pharmacy where he kept a bowel of leaches ready for the sailers fighting over whores. Thety would come in with black eyes, and he would put a leach on their eye and in about a half an hour the black eye would go away and the leaches would drop off. This was in the late 1910's prolly up to the 1930's and it was in San Diego.
PS - squids are what the USA navymen calls themselves
They still use leach therapy today in some clinics.
Exsanguination: Death from bleeding out.
Ex = out , from. You get the rest.
To exsanguinate is to bleed to death...
nice research there, but how about the flegmatic and the other human characters ?
Everyone is happy... and people say gothers are gloomy >:p
well the four humours are a midaeval concept. The first great modern poet Charles Baudelaire expanded on the premise of the four humours by utilizing a new aspect of SPLEEN.
The four humurs were black bile, green bile, blood and Phlegm.
Blood is of course broken down into red and white blood cells. The spleen creates the white blood cells.
Baudelaire died exactly a hundred years before I was born in 1867, and in his day the term Spleen was bantered about in Pari for use to describe a state of ennui (boredom) but closer to a depression brought on by the oppressiveness of life. The humours were considered to be fluid feelings in the flow of life contact amongst friends. Ennui of spleen on the other hand was bent towards the removedness of life, which sometimes fosters great passions, or twisted passions. Repressed needs to be expressed. It was this force of life that Baudelaire popularized and gave new meaning to the incomplete definiton provided by the midaeval concept of the four humours, and brought man into a new understanding of modern life reflected in his poetry, thus ringing in a new age.