splenish

English

Adjective

splenish (comparative more splenish, superlative most splenish)

1. Obsolete form of spleenish.
   • 1716, John Dryden, Miscellany Poems, page 236:

     But here your selves you must engage Somewhat to cool your splenish Rage,

   • 1857, Charles Saville, Synthèse de la langue anglaise, page 240:

     There is also a chancellor, —no, I mistake,— a chandler and green-grocer, with his hands full of warts; a hunch-backed cadger; a one-eyed cutler; a pudgy exciseman, who is often the worse for liquor, being fond of tippling and sotting in taps; a lubberly fuller; a limping spoffish limner; a twer, with a wen or a whelk on the tip of his nose; a stuttering plumber; a splenish quaker; a sexton, with teeth like the times of a harrow; a weazen-faced vintner; a snuffling undertaker's mute, clothed in deep mourning, and talking of nothing but hearses and palls, dirges and passing-bells.

   • 1949, Joseph Hall, Arnold Davenport, Collected Poems, page 62:

     O lawlesse paunch the cause of much despight, Through raunging of a currish appetite, When splenish morsels cram the gaping Maw, Withouten diets care, or trencher-law, Tho neuer haue I Salerne rimes profest To be some Ladies trencher-criticke guest;

   • 2014, Jessie Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England:

     His 'kinsmanly care' advanced him neither socially nor financially. He complained of being 'lugged and worried' like a baited bear and exposed to 'splenish censure'.