consonantal digraph, an initial sequence used in Latin (and thus in English words from Latin) to represent Greek initial aspirated r-. The medial Greek form of it usually is represented by -rrh-, as in catarrh, diarrhea, hemorrhage, myrrh, Pyrrhic. As it was pronounced as simply "r" in Middle English (as in Old French and Spanish), the -h- tended to be dropped in spelling but was restored in early Modern English with the classical revival.

"contemptible person," 1790, Scottish and Northern, earlier "a sudden slap, stroke, or blow" (1785), perhaps from Old Norse skyt-, from skjota "to shoot" (compare skit, and see shoot (v.)).

Also perhaps from or influenced by dialectal skit (n.), Middle English skite "dysentery, diarrhea" (mid-14c., c. 1200 in surnames), from Old Norse skitr "to shit."

mid-14c., colrik, "bilious of temperament or complexion," from Old French colerique, from Late Latin cholericus, from Greek kholerikos, from Greek kholera "a type of disease characterized by diarrhea, supposedly caused by bile," from khole "gall, bile," so called for its color, related to khloazein "to be green," khlōros "pale green, greenish-yellow," from PIE root *ghel- (2) "to shine," with derivatives denoting "green, yellow," and thus "bile, gall." Meaning "easily angered, hot-tempered" is from 1580s (from the supposed effect of excess choler); that of "pertaining to cholera" is from 1834.

late 14c., "bile, melancholy" (originally the same as choler), from French cholera or directly from Late Latin cholera, from Greek kholera "a type of disease characterized by diarrhea, supposedly caused by bile" (Celsus), from khole "gall, bile," so called for its color, related to khloazein "to be green," khlōros "pale green, greenish-yellow," from PIE root *ghel- (2) "to shine," with derivatives denoting "green, yellow," and thus "bile, gall." But another sense of khole was "drainpipe, gutter."

Revived 1560s in classical sense as a name for a severe digestive disorder (rarely fatal to adults); and 1704 (especially as cholera morbus), for a highly lethal disease endemic in India, periodically breaking out in global epidemics, especially that reaching Britain and America in the early 1830s.