Fulsome

Use in the book

Burton’s imagined commonwealth places trades with offensive smells in remote streets so that they do not trouble other inhabitants. The medical account of air likewise describes a “stinking fulsom smell” from marshes, drains or decaying matter, attributing the connection with disease to named ancient and modern physicians. These are historical proposals and causal beliefs. The adjective identifies the sensory nuisance; it does not by itself establish the claimed disease mechanism.

The “fulsome stuffe” vomited by Katherine Gualter belongs to Cornelius Gemma’s extraordinary narrative. Burton reports vast quantities and many foreign objects, along with Gemma’s claim to have seen the events with horror. The continuation says medicine failed and she was left to the clergy. The story’s claimed witnessing must remain distinct from independent clinical verification. In the account of baths, “that fulsomeness of sweat” is the offensive quality to be washed away, but “belike” makes Burton’s explanation of their purpose conjectural. His report of Gillius and Turkish bathing customs does not warrant silently strengthening that conjecture into an established motive.

Disgust can be a judgment attached to a person or profession. The surgeon called “fulsome” is one item in a catalogue of derogatory occupations, meant to show the absence of contentment or security. In the love discussion, the “fulsome knaves” are rustic pastoral figures who are said to smell of horse dung. Yet the sentence grants that even they are instantly inspired if they taste love’s liquor; their country festivities and gifts stand beside the more elaborate entertainments of elite lovers. The insulting label does not cancel that comparison.

The word’s polarity must also be checked. In the consolation for melancholy, Burton uses Erasmus’s painful stone illness as an analogy: it was not offensive or “fulsom” to onlookers. The denial helps distinguish the sufferer’s own pain from a visitor’s fear or disgust. Burton’s accompanying grouping of diseases mixes contagion, appearance and company; it should not be converted into a modern medical classification.

Medical controversy gives disgust a polemical use. The “fulsome” potions are the rivals’ remedies as derided in reported Paracelsian boasts. Burton then says both sides are extreme. Elsewhere the “fulsomness of the taste” is a practical objection a historical preparation is said to mitigate. The former is competitive invective, the latter a sensory qualification; neither lexical example supplies present-day treatment advice. Finally, in the disenchanting catalogue of fading beauty, those once admired are predicted to grow “fulsome” and stale. The surrounding hypothetical composite grants every imaginable perfection before asserting its vulnerability to time and misfortune. Here repulsion or cloying loss of appeal belongs to Burton’s gendered rhetoric of disillusionment, not necessarily to a literal bad smell.

A more specific food-and-drink value occurs when Burton calls beer before the use of hops “thick and fulsome”: the second adjective means heavy or cloying, beside the separate claim of thickness. His explanation credits hops with thinning and cleansing within the herbal catalogue; it remains his historical account of beer and medicine. The spelling “fullsome” also occurs in “fullsome crudities”, foul undigested matter, in the bodily symptom catalogue. Crudities names insufficiently digested substances, while the adjective adds offensiveness. The preceding paragraph expressly denies that fear and sorrow appear in every case.

Related entries

Air: The historical argument about offensive air.

Homely: Plainness or over-familiarity differs from repulsiveness.

Paracelsian: The medical factional setting of the attack on rival potions.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 22–24occupational organization in the imagined commonwealth, including separation of trades offensive in smell.
2. Subsection 2 A Digression on the Nature of Spirits Evil Angels or Devils and How They Cause Melancholy · paragraphs 24–26Gemma’s extraordinary case, the foul matter, claimed witnessing and transfer from physicians to clergy.
3. Subsection 5 Bad Air as a Cause of Melancholy · paragraphs 1–3climatic distinctions and the attributed association of foul-smelling air with disease.
4. Subsection 10. Discontents, Cares, Miseries and the Like as Causes · paragraphs 4–6professional discontent and the derisive catalogue that calls a surgeon disgusting.
5. Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraphs 12–15variable historical bodily symptoms, fullsome crudities and the explicit denial that fear and sorrow are universal.
6. Member 2. Retention and Evacuation Corrected · paragraphs 38–40reported bathing customs and the expressly conjectural explanation about offensive sweat.
7. Member 8 Against Melancholy Itself · paragraphs 25–27consolation, the negated description in Erasmus’s example, and suffering contrasted with its effect on others.
8. Subsection 3 Alteratives Herbs and Other Plant Remedies · paragraphs 15–17the herbal catalogue’s hop passage and beer described as thick and cloying; the note distinguishes both kinds of bile in the margin from all choler in the body.
9. Subsection 4 Precious Stones Metals and Minerals as Alteratives · paragraphs 39–42Paracelsian boasts against repulsive potions, followed by Burton’s criticism of both extremes.
10. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraphs 31–33upward-purging medicines, nauseating taste and disagreement over the attributed operation of the substance.
11. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraphs 12–14poetic inspiration extended from famous lovers to the disparaged rustics and their own festivities.
12. By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraphs 39–44a hypothetical perfect beauty followed by the rhetoric of change, lost attraction and repulsion.

In this edition

“Fulsome stuffe” becomes “foul matter”. “That fulsomeness of sweat” becomes “the offensive sweat”: the translation turns an abstract quality into an adjective, without making fulsomeness another name for sweat. The parallel “fulsomness of the taste” becomes “its nauseating taste”. In the professional stereotype the adjective is “disgusting”; among the rustic lovers, “fulsome knaves” becomes “foul fellows”. The latter preserves a social insult as well as a sensory judgment.

The broader construction matters where “fulsom” occurs under “not”: the modern sequence “nor repulsive, ghastly, disgusting or terrifying to onlookers” retains that negation. “Grow fulsome” in the fading-beauty catalogue contributes “become repellent”. The changing English equivalents follow the target and tone of the disgust rather than imposing either abundance or excessive praise on all the passages.

“Fullsome crudities” → “foul undigested matter” keeps the adjective distinct from the digestive noun. “Thick and fulsome” → “thick and cloying” preserves two different qualities of the beer.

fulsome · fulsome stuffe

Printed “fulsome stuffe” (English; lemma).

Foul or disgusting material.

Here: Fulsome supplies foulness; stuffe means matter or material. The extraordinary vomit is part of Gemma’s reported case, not an independently established observation.

Context: Burton continues a story attributed to Cornelius Gemma, including the source’s claim of horrified eyewitness testimony.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: fulsome stuffe

Modern rendering: foul matter

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “fulsome” (English; lemma).

Citation key: fulsome.

Here: Noysom and fulsome both characterize offensive smells; the modern phrase combines the coordinated adjectives. The proposed town plan segregates nuisance trades.

Context: A prescription within Burton’s imagined commonwealth, not a claim that this zoning exists.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: noysom or fulsome for bad smels

Modern rendering: offensive because of their smells

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The paired adjectives noysom or fulsome are jointly represented by offensive; for bad smels supplies the causal smell phrase.

Further local use

Printed “fulsom” (English; lemma).

Citation key: fulsome.

Here: Fulsom contributes disgusting; stinking supplies foul, and smell names the sensory object. Historical physicians’ disease causation is attributed to them.

Context: Burton reports Galen, Avicenna, Mercurialis and other physicians on unhealthy air.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: stinking fulsom smell

Modern rendering: foul, disgusting smell

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “fullsome crudities” (English; lemma).

Citation key: fulsome.

Here: Fullsome is the doubled-l spelling of foul or offensive; crudities separately means substances insufficiently digested. The phrase belongs to a historical bodily symptom catalogue, not the modern illness-preoccupation sense of hypochondria.

Context: Burton lists signs after expressly agreeing that fear and sorrow are not universal symptoms; the next paragraphs vary the symptoms further.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: fullsome crudities

Modern rendering: foul undigested matter

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · local use 1

Printed “fulsome” (English; lemma).

Repulsive or disgusting, used as a disparaging social judgment.

Here: The surgeon receives one of a catalogue of derisive professional stereotypes. The adjective is not a neutral occupational definition.

Context: Burton’s argument that no profession escapes discontent draws on the world’s contemptuous valuations.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: A Chyrurgian, fulsome

Modern rendering: a surgeon, disgusting

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · fulsomeness

Printed “fulsomeness” (English; lemma).

Offensiveness or foulness.

Here: The noun names sweat’s offensive quality; the modern phrase recasts the abstract noun as an adjective modifying sweat. Belike qualifies the proposed reason for bathing.

Context: Burton conjectures a purpose of baths in his account of Gillius and contemporary Turkish customs.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: that fulsomeness of sweat

Modern rendering: the offensive sweat

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: Fulsomeness contributes offensive quality; of sweat identifies its bearer. The translation changes the construction from quality-of-sweat to adjective-plus-sweat.

fulsome · fulsom

Printed “fulsom” (English; lemma).

Disgusting or repellent, here expressly negated.

Here: The phrase denies offensiveness to spectators in the Erasmus stone comparison used to console melancholy sufferers. It does not call their condition disgusting.

Context: Burton’s consolation distinguishes sufferers’ pain from observers’ reaction; the historical disease grouping is not a consistent modern classification.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: not lothsome to the spectators, gastly, fulsom, terrible

Modern rendering: nor repulsive, ghastly, disgusting or terrifying to onlookers

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · local use 2

Printed “fulsome” (English; lemma).

Nauseating or repulsive.

Here: The adjective attacks rival medicines’ sensory offensiveness; the drop-versus-drams boast is a different claim about quantity and efficacy.

Context: Reported Paracelsian invective. Burton soon says both parties take extreme positions.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: loathsome and fulsome filthy potions

Modern rendering: loathsome, nauseating, filthy potions

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · fulsomness

Printed “fulsomness” (English; lemma).

Nauseating quality or offensiveness of flavour.

Here: The abstract noun becomes nauseating in the English phrase. The historical preparation is said to be tempered to reduce this quality.

Context: Burton reports medical practice and authorities; the lexical example is not a recommendation to take an emetic.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the fulsomness of the taste

Modern rendering: its nauseating taste

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · local use 3

Printed “fulsome” (English; lemma).

Foul or disgusting, especially in smell.

Here: A preceding Latin description says the pastoral rustics stink of horse dung; Burton then allows them instant poetic inspiration if they taste the liquor of love.

Context: Burton’s class-laden caricature introduces a comparison between rustic and elite love customs.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: those fulsome knaves

Modern rendering: those foul fellows

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · local use 4

Printed “fulsome” (English; lemma).

Repellent, offensive or cloying to someone’s taste.

Here: The word participates in the predicted loss of lovers’ attraction as appearance changes, not a measured claim about bodily smell.

Context: Burton’s deliberately disenchanting and gendered rhetoric about fading beauty, following a hypothetical composite of every perfection.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: grow fulsome, stale, sad, heavy, dull, sour

Modern rendering: become repellent, stale, gloomy, heavy, dull and sour

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

fulsome · local use 5

Printed “fulsome” (English; lemma).

Heavy or cloying to drink.

Here: Thick supplies density; fulsome adds the oppressively heavy or cloying quality of the beer. This food-and-drink sense is more specific than foulness or disgust.

Context: Burton credits hops with thinning and cleansing beer within historical medicinal claims; this is his account, not an independently established brewing history.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: thick and fulsome

Modern rendering: thick and cloying

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.