Gut, subs. (vulgar).—The vice or habit of gluttony; the belly [as opposed to the Groin (q.v.).]
2. in. pl. (common).—The stomach and intestines.
1609. Dekker, Gul’s Horne-Booke, chap. ii. The Neapolitan will (like Derick, the hangman) embrace you with one arme, and rip your guts with the other.
1640. Rawlins, The Rebellion, iii. (Dodsley, Old Plays, 4th ed., 1875, xiv., 48). Thou hast a gut could swallow a peck loaf.
1661. Brome, Poems, ‘A Satire on the Rebellion.’ The grumbling guts, the belly of the State.
1713. Bentley, On Free Thinking, sect. 53. What then was our writer’s soul? Was it brain or guts?
1754. Fielding, Jonathan Wild, bk. iv., c. 1. But so it was that the knife, missing these noble parts (the noblest of many) the guts, perforated only the hollow of his belly.
1787. Burns, Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 27. A countra Laird had ta’en the batts, Or some curmurring in his guts.
3. in. pl. (old).—A fat man; a forty-guts (q.v.). Also Guts-and-garbage. More Guts (also More Balls) than Brains = a fool.
1598. Shakspeare, Henry IV., pt. 1, ii., 2. Peace, ye fat-guts.