The troubles with "gall," as in "he had the unmitigated gall (to do something very annoying)" seem to have started early. In the ancient psychology of the humours "gall" meant "yellow bile," which caused anger. The stuff is produced by the liver and collected in the gall bladder, which Hippocrates probably knew, although physicians at least until 1800 were still arguing about whether violent madness was a disorder of the liver, the gall bladder, or possibly the spleen or the blood vessels.
Red Herrings: I think the word has nothing to do with the peoples the Romans called Gauls (demonized as violent barbarians), and it certainly has nothing to do with 19th century phrenologist Franz Joseph Gall, who is unrelated to Franz Lizt, whose name does not appear on Sue Frantz' list, tempting as such extended puns have been to humourists (meaning jokers, not adherents of the Greek theory of the Humours) from Tom Lehrer (sometime fondly remember on TIPS by us old folks) to S. Black. Red Herrings is not related to Redd Foxx, nor to Oswald Hering. But I digress...
It all began, it seems, by equating a sore on the skin with a gnarly, acetic bit of bark on an oak tree...
gall noun. [Middle English galle; perhaps from Latin galla, a gallnut, but probably connected with Old French galle, an itching, sore (of same origin).
gallnut noun. a tumor on plant tissue, esp. those on oak trees, valued for tannic acid
gall verb transitive. 1. to excoriate, hurt, rub, chafe... 2. irritate, annoy, vex, chagrin. "Tyrant, I well deserve thy galling chain." -Alexander Pope
gall noun. 1. bile, excreted by the liver and stored in the gall bladder 2. anything bitter or distasteful... 3. the gall bladder 4. a preparation of ox gall, used in painting 5. impudence; brazen assurance; audacity [Colloquial]
bile noun. [Latin bilis, anger.] yellow or greenish fluid ... separated from the blood in the liver ... secretion of the gall bladder and the liver...
- definitions abridged from Websters New Twentieth Century Dictionary (World Publishing, New York and Toronto, 1963)
"...people are sometimes called phlegmatic (lethargic -- too much phlegm = water), choleric (hot tempered -- too much fire = yellow bile), melancholic (depressed -- too much black bile) or sanguine (cheerful, maybe to the point of being giddy -- too much blood). These four humors are at the same time descriptions of personality types and of the sorts of diseases - essentially excesses of personality - to which people are prone."
- from a lecture on Presocratic psychology [http://www.unbf.ca/psychology/likely/greeks/presocratics.htm]
"Father of American Psychiatry" Benjamin Rush found it still necessary to denounce the Theory of Humours in 1812, in favour of the proposition that madness is instead a disease of the blood...
"The most ancient opinion of the proximate cause of intellectual derangement, or what has been called madness, is that it is derived from a morbid state of the liver, and that it discovers itself in a vitiated state of the bile. Hippocrates laid the foundation of this error..."
- Benjamin Rush (1812). Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind
[excerpt: http://www.unbf.ca/psychology/likely/readings/rush1.htm]
People can still be "phlegmatic" (etc.) or "galling" or (see footnotes in Rush reading) "spleeny" in ordinary parlance. Amazing intellectual longevity, those Greeks.
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David G. Likely, Department of Psychology
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N. B., Canada E3B 5A3
History of Psychology:
http://www.unb.ca/psychology/likely/psyc4053.htm
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