belly

English Online Dictionary. What means belly‎? What does belly mean?

English

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɛli/
• Rhymes: -ɛli
• Hyphenation: bel‧ly

Noun

belly (plural bellies)

1. The abdomen, especially a fat one.

2. The stomach.

3. The womb.
4. The lower fuselage of an airplane.
5. The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).
   2. The main curved portion of a knife blade.
   3. (architecture) The hollow part of a curved or bent timber, the convex part of which is the back.

Usage notes

• 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

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: bere
  • Aukan: bee
  • Saramaccan: bë́ë

Translations

See also

• abdomen
• bouk
• have eyes bigger than one's belly
• midriff
• stomach
• tummy

Verb

belly (third-person singular simple present bellies, present participle bellying, simple past and past participle bellied)

1. To position one’s belly; to move on one’s belly.
2. (intransitive) To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow.
   • 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.

3. (transitive) To cause to swell out; to fill.

Derived terms

• bellying
• belly out
• belly up