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bacterial organisms or their spores, such as Anthrax bacillus and the Micrococcus of fowl cholera, which have been demonstrated to be the cause of certain diseases. See Germ theory (bellow). -- Germ cell (Biol.), the germ, egg, spore, or cell from which the plant or animal arises. At one time a part of the body of the…

Irascible; choleric. "Iracund people." Carlyle.

Prone to anger; easily provoked or inflamed to anger; choleric; irritable; as, an irascible man; an irascible temper or mood. -- I*ras"ci*ble*ness, n. -- I*ras"ci*bly, adv.

A medicine supposed to expel black bile or choler. [Obs.]

ticularly applied to bacteria and especially to pathogenic forms; as, the microbe of fowl cholera.

Fig.: Hot-tempered; passionate; choleric.

To engender; to generate; to set the germ of. It engenders choler, planteth anger. Shak.

rrel; given to brawls and contention; easily irritated or provoked to contest; irascible; choleric.

resembling rice water in appearance, which is vomited, and discharged from the bowels, in cholera. -- Rice weevil (Zoöl.), a small beetle (Calandra, or Sitophilus, oryzæ) which destroys rice, wheat, and Indian corn by eating out the interior; -- called also black weevil.

ength or the height; not thick; slim; as, a slender stem or stalk of a plant. "A slender, choleric man." Chaucer. She, as a veil down to the slender waist, Her unadorned golden tresses wore. Milton.

A fit of anger; choler. Shak.

emperament; in old writers, the mixture or relative proportion of the four humors, blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy. The exquisiteness of his [Christ's] bodily temper increased the exquisiteness of his torment. Fuller.

, especially of the fluids, as the bile, blood, lymph, etc. Hence the phrases, bilious or choleric temperament, sanguine temperament, etc., implying a predominance of one of these fluids and a corresponding influence on the temperament. Equal temperament (Mus.), that in which the variations from mathematically true pit…

, or favor; sympathetic. The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. James v. 11. I am choleric by my nature, and tender by my temper. Fuller.

d by Vaughan in putrid cheese and other dairy products, and producing symptoms similar to cholera infantum. Chemically, it appears to be related to, or identical with, diazobenzol.