As a French-speaking person, I was a bit confused by the word "Spleen", as it means something akin to "Melancholy" in French (it was mostly used by Renaissance poets like Beaudelaire), but I always assumed it was an anglicism or something so I really wasn't expecting it to be a body part.
What's kind of funny is that the French word for this organ, "rate", is used in the idiom "Se dilater la rate", which means laughing a lot.
So the same organ's name is related to both sadness and laughter, depending on the language.
I now realize that I still don't know what a spleen is or what it does in the body; time to fire up Wikipedia!
What's kind of funny is that the French word for this organ, "rate", is used in the idiom "Se dilater la rate", which means laughing a lot.
So the same organ's name is related to both sadness and laughter, depending on the language.
I now realize that I still don't know what a spleen is or what it does in the body; time to fire up Wikipedia!