Belly
noun, verb ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 The abdomen (especially a fat one).
"You've grown a belly over Christmas! Time to join the gym again."
- 2 the underpart of the body of certain vertebrates such as snakes or fish wordnet
- 3 stomach (an organ in animals that stores food in the process of digestion)
"My belly was full of wine."
- 4 a protruding abdomen wordnet
- 5 uterus (a reproductive organ of therian mammals in which the young are conceived and develop until birth) countable
"Before I formed thee in the bellie, I knew thee; […]"
Show 7 more definitions
- 6 the region of the body of a vertebrate between the thorax and the pelvis wordnet
- 7 The lower fuselage of an airplane.
"There was no heat, and we shivered in the belly of the plane."
- 8 the hollow inside of something wordnet
- 9 The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).
"the belly of a flask, muscle, violin, sail, or ship"
- 10 a part that bulges deeply wordnet
- 11 The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).; The main curved portion of a knife blade.
- 12 The part of anything which resembles (either closely or abstractly) the human belly in protuberance or in concavity; often, the fundus (innermost part).; The hollow part of a curved or bent timber, the convex part of which is the back.
- 1 To position one’s belly; to move on one’s belly.
"Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine."
- 2 swell out or bulge out wordnet
- 3 To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow. intransitive
"The Pow'r appeaſ'd, with Winds ſuffic'd the Sail, / The bellying Canvaſs ſtrutted with the Gale; […]"
- 4 To cause to swell out; to fill. transitive
"Your breath of full consent bellied his sails; […]"
Example
More examples"I think it's about time you stopped putting your belly before your looks."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English bely, beli, bali, below, belew, balyw, from Old English bielġ (“bag, pouch, bulge”), from Proto-West Germanic *balgi, *balgu, from Proto-Germanic *balgiz, *balguz (“skin, hide, bellows, bag”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ- (“to swell, blow up”). Cognate with Dutch balg, German Balg, Danish bælg, Old Irish bolg, Welsh bol. Doublet of bellows, blague, bulge, and budge. See also bellows. For the belly — bellows connection compare typologically Macedonian мев (mev, “abdomen, belly; bellows”). Also compare Ancient Greek φῦσα (phûsa, “bellows; bladder; ...”), Latin venter — vēsīca, Russian пу́зо (púzo) — пузы́рь (puzýrʹ), пузырёк (puzyrjók).
Related phrases
More for "belly"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.