Stomach

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /ˈstʌmək/

Definitions

1. The organ in the body where food goes after being swallowed and begins to be broken down and digested
2. An organ located in the digestive system that receives and breaks down food using acids and enzymes to facilitate nutrient absorption
3. An internal organ that receives ingested food and starts digestion ; the capacity to endure or accept something unpleasant

Etymology: The Greek word "stomachos" literally meant "gullet" or "throat" and came from "stoma", "mouth", so the organ we call the stomach was named for the passage leading to it. The Greek sense of the word then shifted toward the lower part of the digestive system, and Latin "stomachus" carried that meaning into the Romance languages, where Old French "estomac" was the form English borrowed. English had a native word for the same organ, "maga", which survives today only as "maw", meaning the throat or gullet of an animal or the stomach of a hungry creature. The Middle English "stomak" displaced it, so the Latin-Greek term for "mouth-passage" ended up as the everyday name for the organ. Over time "stomach" also came to mean appetite or inclination, as in having the stomach for a fight, and it later became a verb meaning to tolerate something unpleasant. Those figurative senses grew out of the organ's role as the seat of hunger, courage and feeling, and they are now more common than the anatomical one in everyday speech.

Synonyms: belly, abdomen, tummy, gut