Spleen

How to spell spleen

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spleen

What does spleen mean?

1. nounAn organ in the upper left abdomen that filters blood and helps fight infection.
2. nounBad temper, irritability, or spite, often expressed in an outburst.

Spleen in a sentence

• The surgeon removed his damaged spleen after the cycling accident.

• He vented his spleen on the support staff after the meeting collapsed.

• A ruptured spleen can cause dangerous internal bleeding.

• The columnist wrote with such spleen that the editor toned the article down.

Where does spleen come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek splēn, the ordinary name for the soft organ that sits behind the stomach. It passed into Latin as splen and then into Old French before reaching Middle English in the 1300s, keeping the spelling close to its Greek source. In medieval and Renaissance medicine the body's health was thought to depend on four humours, and the spleen was believed to produce black bile, the fluid that made a person gloomy, irritable, or bad-tempered. Because of that old theory, spleen came to mean a fit of ill temper or spite as well as the organ itself, which is why we still speak of someone 'venting their spleen'. The unusual 'spl' opening and the 'ee' spelling both trace straight back to the Greek root, and that classical pedigree is the easiest way to remember why it is not spelled 'spleen' any other way.

How the word is built

• spleen (single root, from Greek splēn: the abdominal organ); no prefix or suffix