English Dictionary

PHLEGMATIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does phlegmatic mean? 

PHLEGMATIC (adjective)
  The adjective PHLEGMATIC has 1 sense:

1. showing little emotionplay

  Familiarity information: PHLEGMATIC used as an adjective is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


PHLEGMATIC (adjective)


Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing little emotion

Synonyms:

phlegmatic; phlegmatical

Context example:

a phlegmatic...and certainly undemonstrative man

Similar:

unemotional (unsusceptible to or destitute of or showing no emotion)

Derivation:

phlegm (inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy)

phlegm (apathy demonstrated by an absence of emotional reactions)


 Context examples 


She said "Good morning, Miss," in her usual phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more tape, went on with her sewing.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Quincey Morris was phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has to stake.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

One realised the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes’s phlegmatic exterior when one saw the sudden change which came over him from the moment that he entered the fatal apartment.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational—I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant's.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Is he a person of low stature, phlegmatic, and plain.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up at him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does Mr. Rochester.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one's ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Give the Devil his due." (English proverb)

"Do not wait for good things to search for you, you search for them." (Albanian proverb)

"Never let your tongue hit your neck." (Arabic proverb)

"No news is good news." (Dutch proverb)



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