Excrement

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɛkskɹəmənt/

Definitions

1. Solid waste matter discharged from the bowels of humans or animals
2. Waste produced by the digestive process of living organisms that is expelled from the body
3. The solid material eliminated from the intestines of humans or animals after digestion

Etymology: The Latin "excrementum" had a surprisingly wide range before it narrowed to waste. Its ancestry is disputed: one account links it to "excernere", "to sift out" or "to separate", which gives the sense of something sifted away from the usable part, while another connects it to "excrescere", "to grow out", so that the body's discarded matter was imagined as something that sprouts or emerges. Both lines of descent point toward things that are pushed or separated out of a whole. English borrowed the word directly from Latin, and it was used in the sense of the body's waste by the late 1500s, though the Latin root itself was never confined to that meaning. Latin writers applied it to all sorts of leftovers, including hair, nail clippings and the residue of processed substances, and the medical sense of bodily waste grew out of that broader usage.

Synonyms: feces, stool, waste, manure, droppings