Sanguine (SANG-gwin) -- from the Latin for "blood" -- means cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident. How did blood come to mean optimistic? The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that there were four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. And they believed that an imbalance of these "humors" determined a person's personality. People with an overabundance of blood tended to have a cheerful disposition. Those with too much phlegm were phlegmatic (calm and unemotional). Those with too much yellow bile were choleric (hotheaded). And those with too much black bile were melancholic (gloomy and depressed).
Example: "Nuclear is the future for energy in this country. I'm not sanguine about solar and wind power, because they're not going to be able to add enough capacity to make up for the long-term energy shortage. But new alternative technologies will be developed. And we will be investing in them."
No comments:
Post a Comment