belly
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: anatomy
architecture
medicine
sciences
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ-
Proto-Indo-European *-is
Proto-Indo-European *bʰólǵʰis
Proto-Germanic *balgiz
Proto-West Germanic *balgi
Old English bielġ
Middle English bely
English belly
Inherited from Middle English bely, beli, bali, below, belew, balyw, from Old English bielġ (“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, Danish bælg, Old Irish bolg, Welsh bol. Doublet of bellows, blague, bulge, and budge. See also bellows.
For the belly — bellows relation, compare typologically Macedonian мев (mev, “abdomen, belly; bellows”). Also compare Ancient Greek φῦσα (phûsa, “bellows; bladder; ...”), Latin venter — vēsīca, Russian пу́зо (púzo) — пузы́рь (puzýrʹ), пузырёк (puzyrjók).
Inflected forms:
form: bellies
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: bellie
pos: noun
tags: alternative
archaic
form: bellies
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: bellying
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: bellied
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: bellied
pos: verb
tags: past
form: bellie
pos: verb
tags: alternative
archaic
Senses:
gloss: The abdomen (especially a fat one).
pos: noun
examples: You've grown a belly over Christmas! Time to join the gym again.
gloss: stomach (an organ in animals that stores food in the process of digestion)
pos: noun
examples: My belly was full of wine.
gloss: uterus (a reproductive organ of therian mammals in which the young are conceived and develop until birth)
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: Before I formed thee in the bellie, I knew thee; […]
gloss: The lower fuselage of an airplane.
pos: noun
examples: There was no heat, and we shivered in the belly of the plane.
gloss: The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).
pos: noun
examples: the belly of a flask, muscle, violin, sail, or ship
[…] 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.
At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water […]
gloss: The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).
pos: noun
gloss: The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).
pos: noun
gloss: To position one’s belly; to move on one’s belly.
pos: verb
examples: Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.
gloss: To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The Pow'r appeaſ'd, with Winds ſuffic'd the Sail, / The bellying Canvaſs ſtrutted with the Gale; […]
The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,
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,
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.
gloss: To cause to swell out; to fill.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Your breath of full consent bellied his sails; […]
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.
Synonyms: abdomen
belly
midriff
stomach
tum
tummy
tum-tum
ventrum
Related words: abdomen
bouk
have eyes bigger than one's belly
midriff
stomach
tummy
Derived words: Bali belly
beer belly
bellyache
belly-aching
belly bag
belly-band
belly band
bellyband
belly boat
belly breathing
belly buster
bellybutton
belly button
belly-button
belly button ring
belly chain
bellycheer
bellycrawl
belly dance
belly-dance
belly dancer
belly-dancer
belly dancing
belly-dumper
belly dumper
belly-flop
belly flop
bellyflop
belly flopper
bellyful
belly-god
belly itcher
belly landing
bellylaugh
belly laugh
belly-laugh
bellyless
bellylike
bellyload
belly of the beast
belly of the whale
belly pork
belly ring
bellyscraper
belly shirt
belly spark
belly sweetbread
belly-tember
belly-timber
belly-timmer
belly trap
belly-up
belly-up peach
belly up to the bar
belly vengeance
belly-wahk
bellywark
belly-wark
bellywash
belly whop
belly whopper
bluebelly
blue belly
Buddha belly
Buddha belly bamboo
copperbelly
corona belly
Delhi belly
double belly buster
drum belly
empathy belly
firebelly
fire in one's belly
fire in the belly
fishbelly
fish belly girder
fish-belly girder
go belly-up
gorbelly
jelly belly
kettlebelly
lower than a snake's belly
one's belly thinks one's throat has been cut
pinch-belly
pinch-belly vengeance
pink belly
plead the belly
pork belly
porridge belly
possum belly
potbelly
pot belly
pot-belly
prune belly syndrome
pufferbelly
redbelly
sawbelly
shadbelly
sharpbelly
slow belly
snakebelly
sourbelly
sowbelly
speckled-belly
sugar belly
swagbelly
swillbelly
swill-belly
tenterbelly
tun-belly
underbelly
whip-belly
whip-belly vengeance
whistle-belly vengeance
whitebelly
wolf in one's belly
yellow belly
yellowbelly
bellying
belly out
belly up
Translations:
lang: Finnish
word: vatsa
lang: Finnish
word: pullistuma
lang: Finnish
word: koppa
lang: Finnish
word: pussi
lang: Finnish
word: ruuma
lang: Galician
word: boxo
lang: Galician
word: boxe
lang: Māori
word: kete
lang: Māori
word: pukehina
lang: Māori
word: nake
lang: Māori
word: ngake