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A phlegmatic person is calm and not easily or worried. Bad news, noise, and other people's panic do not light them up quickly. The word can be a compliment — steady, hard to rattle — or a soft criticism, as if they are a bit dull or slow to care. It is a rather , grown-up adjective; in daily talk people more often say calm, even-tempered, or unflappable. Though actually, the tidy modern meaning hides an old medical story. For hundreds of years, doctors thought the body had four 'humours', and too much phlegm (a cold, wet one) made you mild, cold, sluggish, and hard to move. We do not believe that map of the body now, but the personality word stayed. The spelling was later made to look more Greek and Latin, and the sound followed the new spelling. It does not mean 'full of mucus' today, even though phlegm still means that sticky stuff in your throat.
沉著的；不易激動的（舊醫學說的「黏液質」性格；不是「痰很多」）
組成From Middle English fleumatik and kin, from Old French fleumatique, from Latin phlegmaticus, from Ancient Greek phlegmatikós, from phlégma (phlegm). Old medicine tied that humour to mildness, coldness, sluggishness, and not caring much. Spelling was later changed to look like the Latin and Greek roots, and modern pronunciation follows that new spelling.
同家族的字
- phlegmsame Greek root; the old humour, and still the word for mucus
- phlegmaticallythe adverb built from this adjective
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
phlegmaticadj/flɛɡˈmætɪk/
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Not easily excited to action or passion; calm; sluggish.
- Calm and phlegmatic, with a clear eye, Mr. Fogg seemed a perfect type of that English composure which Angelica Kauffmann has so skilfully represented on canvas.
- 2013, A.O. Scott, “How It Looks to Think: Watch Her,” Rev. of Hannah Arendt, dir. by Margarethe von Trotta, New York Times 29 May 2013: C1. Print. Their friendship (immortalized in a splendid volume of letters that has clearly served as one of Ms. von Trotta's sources) is a fascinating study in cultural and temperamental contrast, an impulsive and witty American paired with a steady, phlegmatic German.
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Generating, causing, or full of phlegm.
- cold and phlegmatic bodies
- Near-synonyms: phlegmish, phlegmy
phlegmaticnoun/flɛɡˈmætɪk/
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One who has a phlegmatic disposition.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。