belly
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English bely, beli, bali, below, belew, balyw, from Old English belg, bælg, bæliġ (“bag, pouch, bulge”), from Proto-West Germanic *balgi, *balgu, from Proto-Germanic *balgiz, *balguz (“skin, hide, bellows, bag”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ- (“to swell, blow up”). Cognate with Dutch balg, German Balg. Doublet of bellows, blague, bulge, and budge. See also bellows.
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
belly (plural bellies)
- The abdomen, especially a fat one.
- You've grown a belly over Christmas! Time to join the gym again.
- The stomach.
- My belly was full of wine.
- The womb.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] 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), London: […] 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 notes[edit]
- 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.
Derived terms[edit]
Descendants[edit]
- Sranan Tongo: bere
Translations[edit]
abdomen — See also translations at abdomen
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stomach — see stomach
the part of anything resembling a belly
See also[edit]
Verb[edit]
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 July, Jack London, “The Sounding of the Call”, in The Call of the Wild, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., OCLC 28228581, page 220:
- Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.
- (intransitive) To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow.
- 1700, [John] Dryden, “Homer’s Ilias”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], 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,”[1]
- The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,
- 1914, Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Chapter 6,[2]
- 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,[3]
- 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. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act II, scene ii]:
- Your breath of full consent bellied his sails; […]
- 1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter I, in Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, OCLC 1229243390:
- 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.
Derived terms[edit]
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰelǵʰ-
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰel- (blow)
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English doublets
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɛli
- Rhymes:English/ɛli/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- en:Architecture
- English verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English transitive verbs
- en:Anatomy