bilious

Adjective

1. Of or pertaining to something containing or consisting of bile.
2. Resembling bile, especially in color.
   • Does money fail?—come to my mint—coin paper, Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed To show his bilious face, go purge himself, In emulation of her vestal whiteness. - 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or,...
   • His complexion was pale, not of that deadly pallor which is a kind of neutral beauty, but of a bilious, yellow hue; his colorless hair was short and scarcely extended beyond the circle formed by the hat around his head,...
   • The business-center of Schoenstrom took up one side of one block, facing the railroad. It was a row of one-story shops covered with galvanized iron, or with clapboards painted red and bilious yellow. - 1920, Sinclair...
3. Suffering from real or supposed liver disorder, especially excessive secretions of bile.
   • Perry tells me that Mr. Cole never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but he is bilious—Mr. Cole is very bilious. - 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume II, chapter 7:
4. Peevishly ill-humored, irritable or bad tempered; irascible.
   • The glorified spirit of a great statesman and philosopher dawdling, like a bilious old Nabob at a watering-place, over quarterly reviews and novels—dropping in to pay long calls—making excursions in search of the...
   • The boarders, sharp-tongued bilious widows, pursued the only man in the establishment, a mild, bald creature who worked in La Samaritaine […] - 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days:

   Synonyms: choleric irascible peevish testy cranky splenetic

   Antonyms: pleasant amiable good-natured genial even-tempered