Disembowelling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of extracting the internal organs from a body, commonly associated with a surgical method used in animals, or a brutal form of attack involving the removal of vital organs in a shocking way
2. This refers to the surgical removal of entrails from either an animal or human, as well as an act of violence that involves severe bodily harm by taking out the internal organs
3. The act of taking out the internal organs from inside a living or dead body

Etymology: "Disembowel" is built from the prefix "dis-", which here means "undo" or "remove," and "embowel," meaning to put into the bowels, or to enclose something within the innards. Together they describe the removal of a body's internal organs. The prefix comes down through Latin and Old French, where "des-" and "dis-" carried the same sense of reversal or separation, and English took it up in the Middle Ages. The verb "embowel" is the older piece. Its root is the noun "bowel," from Old French "boel" and Latin "botellus," a diminutive of "botulus," meaning "sausage." That image of the gut as a coil of sausage-like tubing is the physical picture behind the whole family of words. Once "embowel" existed, English speakers added the "dis-" prefix to create a word for the opposite action, pulling the innards back out. The result is a compound whose parts are both plain and grim: a reversal of a process that was itself named after a sausage. The word is used in both literal anatomy and in figurative talk about dismantling something from the inside out.

Synonyms: eviscerating, gutting