belch

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See also: Belch

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English belchen, from Old English bielċan, from Proto-Germanic *balkijaną, *belkaną, probably ultimately of imitative origin.[1]

Related to Dutch balken (“to bray”), Middle Low German belken (“to shout”), Low German bölken (“to shout, bark”), Old English bealċettan (“to utter, send forth”). See also English bolk, boak.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈbɛltʃ/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Audio (US)(file)
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Particularly: "someone belching a sentence, please"

Verb[edit]

belch (third-person singular simple present belches, present participle belching, simple past and past participle belched)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To expel (gas) from the stomach through the mouth; especially, to do so loudly.
    Synonym: burp
  2. (transitive, intransitive) To eject or emit (something) with spasmodic force or noise.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 230-33:
      Within the gates of hell sat Sin and Death,
      In counterview within the gates, that now
      Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame
      Far into Chaos […] .
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      1697, Virgil, “The Eighth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
      Vulcan this plague begot; and, like his sire,
      Black clouds he belch'd, and flakes of livid fire.
    • 1793, William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion‎[2], lines 30–33:
      […] beneath him sound like waves on a desert shore
      The voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money,
      That shiver in religious caves beneath the burning fires
      Of lust, that belch incessant from the summits of the earth.
    • 1914, Harry Kemp, I sing the Battle‎[3]:
      I sing the song of the great clean guns that belch forth death at will.
      Ah, but the wailing mothers, the lifeless forms and still!
    • 1941, Emily Carr, chapter 18, in Klee Wyck‎[4]:
      I grasped the cold slimy rung. My feet slithered and scrunched on stranded things. Next rung...the next and next...endless horrible rungs, hissing and smells belching from under the wharf.
    • 1996, Clifford Geertz, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 141:
      A book entitled Emerging Indonesia has on its cover photographs of a sunrise over palm trees, bent women in coolie hats transplanting rice, a wooden bull burning at a Balinese cremation, and a liquid nitrogen plant belching black smoke into a clear, undefiled tropical sky.

Synonyms[edit]

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

Noun[edit]

belch (plural belches)

  1. An instance of belching; the sound that it makes.
    Synonym: burp
  2. (obsolete) Malt liquor.
    • c. 1699, John Dennis, letter to Mr. Collier
      Porters would no longer be drunk with Belch

Usage notes[edit]

  • A belch is often considered to be louder than a burp.

Translations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

Anagrams[edit]

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