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BOWELS
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The center of the Earth
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Hypernyms ("bowels" is a kind of...):
center; centre; midpoint (a point equidistant from the ends of a line or the extremities of a figure)
Context examples:
For which the astronomers (who have written large systems concerning the stone) assign the following reason: that the magnetic virtue does not extend beyond the distance of four miles, and that the mineral, which acts upon the stone in the bowels of the earth, and in the sea about six leagues distant from the shore, is not diffused through the whole globe, but terminated with the limits of the king’s dominions; and it was easy, from the great advantage of such a superior situation, for a prince to bring under his obedience whatever country lay within the attraction of that magnet.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Get medical help immediately if: • You have abdominal pain that is sudden and sharp • You also have pain in your chest, neck or shoulder • You're vomiting blood or have blood in your stool • Your abdomen is stiff, hard and tender to touch • You can't move your bowels, especially if you're also vomiting
(Abdominal Pain, NIH)
At least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Phosphine is among the stinkiest, most toxic gases on Earth, found in some of the foulest of places, including penguin dung heaps, the depths of swamps and bogs, and even in the bowels of some badgers and fish.
(Poisonous Earthly Molecule May Be Sign of Extraterrestrial Life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
Their next business is from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, sea-weed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men’s flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a composition, for smell and taste, the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing, and this they call a vomit; or else, from the same store-house, with some other poisonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice above or below (just as the physician then happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which, relaxing the belly, drives down all before it; and this they call a purge, or a clyster.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
