ichors

Noun

ichor (countable and uncountable, plural ichors)

1. (Greek) The liquid said to flow in place of blood in the veins of the gods.
   • This ſaid, ſhe wip’d from Venus’ wounded Palm / The ſacred Ichor, and infus’d the Balm.1716, Homer, “Book V”, in Alexander Pope, transl., The Iliad of Homer, volume II, London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC, page 40, lines 505–506
2. (broadly, poetic) The blood of human beings or animals; also (obsolete) the clear, fluid portion of blood; blood plasma, plasma.
   • He had merely meant to express his feeling that the streams which ran through their veins were not yet purified by time to that perfection, had not become so genuine an ichor, as to be worthy of being called blood in the genealogical sense.1857, Anthony Trollope, “The Thornes of Ullathorne”, in Barchester Towers. […], copyright edition, volume I, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published 1859, →OCLC, page 266
3. (broadly, figuratively, poetic) A blood-like fluid.
   • [I]chores and thoſe ſerious matters being thickned become flegme, and flegme degenerates into choler, choler aduſt becomes æruginoſa melancholia, as vinegar out of the pureſt wine putrified or by exhalation of purer ſpirits is ſo made, and becomes ſowre and ſharp; […]1638, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Of the Matter of Melancholy”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy. […], 5th edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [Robert Young, Miles Flesher, and Leonard...
4. (archaic, broadly) A fluid believed to seep out from magma and cause rock to turn into granite.
5. (broadly, obsolete) A fetid, watery discharge from a sore; pus.

   Synonyms:

   sanies