belly-god

English

Noun

belly-god (plural belly-gods)

1. A supposed god of appetite, food, and eating.
   • 1936 January 1, The World's New, Sydney, page 19, column 2:

     The deck-hands were Cantonese, and, as is well known to worshippers of the belly-god, they eat their rice seasoned.

   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 181:

     For the moment speech failed him, so active were his gastric Juices. The belly god in him was passionately aroused.

2. (obsolete) A lover of food; a glutton; an epicure.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “belly-god”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)