Picrochole is a
fictional character
In fiction, a character (or speaker, in poetry) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, ...
created by
François Rabelais
François Rabelais ( , , ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He is primarily known as a writer of satire, of the grotesque, and of bawdy jokes and ...
, who attacks the Kingdom of
Grandgousier in the novel
Gargantua and Pantagruel
''The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel'' (french: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua ( , ) and his son Pantagruel ...
. His gives his name to the war he fights: .
Picrochole is a stereotypical bad king, whom Rabelais seeks to deride by putting him in apposition to the good king, represented by Grandgousier, Gargantua's father.
The expression ''guerre picrocholine'' (''Picrocholine War'') and the adjective ''picrocholin'' have since entered the French language, meaning an absurd conflict with futile motives.
Origin
"Picrochole" comes from the Greek words
πικρός (pikros) meaning "bitter" and
χολή (chole) meaning "
bile
Bile (from Latin ''bilis''), or gall, is a dark-green-to-yellowish-brown fluid produced by the liver of most vertebrates that aids the digestion of lipids in the small intestine. In humans, bile is produced continuously by the liver (liver bile ...
",
and signifies his dark and acerbic moods. Above all, Picrochole is man who takes on enormous projects he has no chance of completing.
See also
*
References
Rabelais characters
Literary characters introduced in the 1530s
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