belly
Contents
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English beli, from Old English bælġ, from Proto-Germanic *balgiz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ- (“to swell, blow up”). See also bellows.
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
belly (plural bellies)
- The abdomen, especially a fat one.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Dunglison to this entry?)
- The stomach.
- The womb.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Jeremiah 1:5:
- Before I formed thee in the bellie, I knew thee; […]
- The lower fuselage of an airplane.
- 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus 2010, p. 454:
- There was no heat, and we shivered in the belly of the plane.
- 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus 2010, p. 454:
- The part of anything which resembles the human belly in protuberance or in cavity; the innermost part.
- the belly of a flask, muscle, violin, sail, or ship
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Jonah 2:2:
- […] I cried by reason of mine affliction vnto the Lord, and hee heard mee; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voyce.
- (architecture) The hollow part of a curved or bent timber, the convex part of which is the back.
Usage notesEdit
- Formerly, all the splanchnic or visceral cavities were called bellies: the lower belly being the abdomen; the middle belly, the thorax; and the upper belly, the head.
- Applied to the human body, the word is nowadays considered by some to be impolite or even coarse.
Derived termsEdit
Derived terms
TranslationsEdit
abdomen
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the part of anything resembling a belly, a protrubence
See alsoEdit
VerbEdit
belly (third-person singular simple present bellies, present participle bellying, simple past and past participle bellied)
- To position one’s belly; to move on one’s belly.
- 1903, Jack London, The Call of the Wild, Chapter 7,[1]
- Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.
- 1903, Jack London, The Call of the Wild, Chapter 7,[1]
- (intransitive) To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow.
- 1700, [John] Dryden, “Homer’s Ilias”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; Translated into Verse, from Homer, Ovid, Boccace, & Chaucer: With Original Poems, London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, within Gray's Inn Gate next Gray's Inn Lane, OCLC 228732415, book I, page 213:
- The Pow'r appeaſ'd, with Winds ſuffic'd the Sail, / The bellying Canvaſs ſtrutted with the Gale; […]
- 1890, Rudyard Kipling, “The Rhyme of the Three Captains,”[2]
- The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,
- 1914, Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Chapter 6,[3]
- There were trees whose trunks bellied into huge swellings.
- 1917 rev. 1925 Ezra Pound, "Canto I"
- winds from sternward
- Bore us onward with bellying canvas ...
- 1930, Otis Adelbert Kline, The Prince of Peril, serialized in Argosy, Chapter 1,[4]
- The building stood on a circular foundation, and its walls, instead of mounting skyward in a straight line, bellied outward and then curved in again at the top.
- (transitive) To cause to swell out; to fill.
- c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act II, Scene 2,[5]
- Your breath of full consent bellied his sails;
- 1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, Chapter I, I,[6]
- A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom.
- c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act II, Scene 2,[5]