Humour, also spelled 

Humor, (from Latin “liquid,” or “fluid”), in

early Western physiological theory, one of the four fluids of the
body that were thought to determine a person’s temperament and
features. In the ancient physiological theory still current in the
European Middle Ages and later, the four cardinal humours
were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black
bile); the variant mixtures of these humours in different persons
determined their “complexions,” or “temperaments,” their physical
and mental qualities, and their dispositions. The ideal person had
the ideally proportioned mixture of the four; a predominance of one
produced a person who was sanguine
(Latin sanguis, “blood”), phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic. Each
complexion had specific characteristics, and the words carried
much weight that they have since lost: e.g., the choleric man was
not only quick to anger but also yellow-faced, lean, hairy, proud,
ambitious, revengeful, and shrewd. By extension, “humour” in the
16th century came to denote an unbalanced mental condition, a
mood or unreasonable caprice, or a fixed folly or vice.