Cholic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to bile, the digestive fluid produced by the liver, or derived from it in some chemical way
2. Describing a substance connected with bile, such as the acid found in the digestive secretions of the liver
3. Of or pertaining to bile, especially in reference to compounds that are obtained from the liver's digestive fluid

Etymology: "Cholic" is an adjective, and its history runs straight back to the Ancient Greek word for bile, "kholē." Greek physicians and writers used that word for the yellowish fluid the liver produces to aid digestion, and it became the root of a whole family of medical terms. English took the stem through New Latin, the Latin used by scientists and physicians from the early modern period onward, and "cholic" is built by adding the suffix "-ic" to that combining form, a pattern common in technical vocabulary. The result is a term of scientific coinage rather than an old everyday word. Its meaning follows its root: it relates to bile, and in chemistry it names the acid derived from bile, cholic acid, which is the sense most readers will encounter. Chemists and physiologists needed names that could be reliably built from Greek and Latin parts, so the word belongs to the same toolkit that gave English "cholesterol" and "cholera" from the same Greek root.