Gutted

How to spell gutted

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gutted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gutted mean?

1. adjectiveHaving the inside or contents completely destroyed or removed, leaving only a shell.
2. adjectiveExtremely disappointed, upset, or devastated by bad news.
3. adjectiveHaving had the internal organs removed, as with fish or game.

Gutted in a sentence

• The warehouse was completely gutted by the overnight fire.

• She was absolutely gutted when the promotion went to someone else.

• The fishmonger sold the salmon already gutted and ready to cook.

• They bought a gutted terrace house and rebuilt every room inside.

• He felt gutted after his team lost in the final minute.

• A freshly gutted trout keeps far longer on ice.

Where does gutted come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English noun 'guttas', meaning the intestines or innards, which is related to the verb 'geotan', 'to pour', the idea being the channel through which food passes. The plural noun 'guts' had become the verb 'to gut', meaning to remove the entrails of an animal or fish, by the late 1500s. From there the meaning widened to describe stripping out the whole inside of something, so that a building destroyed by fire could be said to be gutted. In modern British and Australian informal speech the word took a vivid emotional turn during the twentieth century, so that a person crushed by bad news is described as gutted, as though hollowed out inside. The spelling trap is simply the doubled t, which English adds because the single short vowel in 'gut' needs the extra consonant to keep its sound before -ed.

How the word is built

• gut (Old English for the intestines or innards)
• -t- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -ed (past tense / adjective ending)