in the old philosophy, a term applied to an appetite or a part of the soul, where anger and the other passions which animate us against things difficult or odious were supposed to reside.

Of the eleven kinds of passions attributed to the soul, philosophers ascribe five to the irascible appetite, viz. wrath, boldness, fear, hope, and despair; the other six being charged on the concupiscible appetite, viz. pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, love, and hatred.