sangui-, sanguio-, sanguin-

1. A human who feeds on blood.
2. A reference to someone who believes he or she needs to consume blood to maintain her or his health.

1. Descriptive of something being accompanied by bloodshed; such as, this battle was described as being fought sanguinarily resulting in a massacre for both side.
2. Marked by eagerness to resort to violence and bloodshed.

1. Full of or characterized by bloodshed; bloody: There was a sanguinary struggle when a woman was attacked in her apartment by a killer and she was able to get his gun when he put it down on a table and killed him while he was beating her.
2. Accompanied by bloodshed: There was a sanguinary boxing match which was very violent. © ALL rights are reserved.

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3. Eager for bloodshed; bloodthirsty: There were sanguinary attacks on cattle by vampire bats that were gorging for the red fluid in the veins of the cows and bulls.

Harsh in inflicting the death penalty; such as, sanguination in laws that provide for the death penalty or cruel vengeance.

1. Confidently optimistic and cheerful: When anyone is sanguine about anything, it means that he or she is hopeful, confident, or cheerfully optimistic about it.

Although many dictionaries indicate that sanguine means "bloody", since it is derived from a Latin origin meaning "bloody" or "full of blood", it is now rare that anyone uses it in that sense any more.

2. Of or pertaining to the red fluid that flows in the body: Sharon was told that her sanguine complexion meant that she had a healthy supply of blood flowing through her veins.

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© ALL rights are reserved.
© ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.

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The similarity in form between sanguine, "cheerfully optimistic", and sanguinary, "bloodthirsty", may prompt people to wonder how these words have resulted in such different meanings.

The explanation lies in medieval physiology with its notion of the four humors or bodily fluids (blood, bile, phlegm, and black bile). The relative proportions of these fluids was thought to determine a person's temperament.

If blood was the predominant humor, then that person had "a ruddy face and a disposition marked by courage, hope, and a readiness to fall in love".

Such a temperament was called sanguine, the Middle English ancestor of the modern word sanguine. The source of the Middle English word was Old French sanguin, itself from Latin sanguineus.

Both the Old French and Latin words meant "bloody, blood-colored". Latin sanguineus was in turn derived from sanguis, "blood", just as the English "sanguinary" is.

The English adjective sanguine, was first recorded in Middle English before 1350, and it continues to refer to the "cheerfulness" and "optimism" that accompanied a sanguine temperament but it no longer has any direct reference to medieval physiology.

Destitute of blood or an excessive lack of blood; pale.

1. Characterized by being confidently optimistic and cheerful.
2. Inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life.

1. Referring to, consisting of, or forming blood.
2. Full-blooded; sanguine; that is, hopeful.
3. A reference to the color of blood.

A cerebral hemorrhage or the flow of blood from a ruptured blood vessel in the brain often followed by neurologic damage; a type of stroke.

Referring to blood or characterized by blood.

A rare spelling of sanguicole, sanguicolous.

1. Subsisting on or consuming blood.
2. A blood sucker.

Referring to or relating to the circulation of blood.

1. Bloody; tinged with blood.
2. Tinged, or mingled, with blood; bloody; such as, sanguinolent sputa.

1. The formation of blood cells in the living body; especially, in the bone marrow.
2. The formation of red blood cells in the blood-forming tissues of the body. 3. The production of all types of blood cells generated by a self-regulated body system that is responsive to the demands put upon it.