Gut

How to spell gut

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gut

What does gut mean?

1. nounThe stomach or intestines, or the soft belly area of the body.
2. verbTo remove the internal organs of a fish or animal, or to strip out the entire inside of a building.
3. adjectiveBased on instinct or strong feeling rather than careful reasoning.

Gut in a sentence

• noun

  The rich meal left an ache deep in his gut.

• verb

  The chef showed the apprentice how to gut and clean a fresh mackerel.

• adjective

  Her gut reaction was to refuse the offer on the spot.

• noun

  Years of office lunches had given him a noticeable gut.

• verb

  The developers plan to gut the old factory and keep only its outer walls.

• adjective

  Experienced traders sometimes trust a gut instinct over the spreadsheet.

Where does gut come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Gut comes straight from Old English, where the plural form 'guttas' named the bowels or entrails. It belongs to the Germanic family of words and is thought to derive from the same ancient root as the Old English verb 'geotan', meaning 'to pour', the idea being a channel through which food passes and pours. For centuries it referred plainly to the digestive organs of people and animals, which is why a hunter still 'guts' a fish today. From the literal organs grew the figurative 'guts' meaning courage or nerve, and the modern 'gut feeling', an instinct sensed in the belly rather than reasoned out. Because it is a short, native word spelled exactly as it sounds, the spelling has stayed remarkably stable across the whole history of English.

How the word is built

• gut (single Old English root; no prefix or suffix)