different between belly vs vitals

English

Etymology

From Middle English bely, beli, bali, below, belew, balyw, from Old English belg, bælg, bæli? (“bag, pouch, bulge”), from Proto-Germanic *balgiz (“skin, hide, bellows, bag”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?el??- (“to swell, blow up”). Cognate with Dutch balg, German Balg. Doublet of blague. See also bellows.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?b?li/
• Rhymes: -?li
• Hyphenation: bel?ly

Noun

belly (plural bellies)

1. The abdomen, especially a fat one.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dunglison to this entry?)

2. The stomach.

3. The womb.
4. The lower fuselage of an airplane.
   • 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus 2010, p. 454:

     There was no heat, and we shivered in the belly of the plane.

5. The part of anything which resembles the human belly in protuberance or in cavity; the innermost part.
6. (architecture) The hollow part of a curved or bent timber, the convex part of which is the back.

Usage notes

• Formerly, all the splanchnic or visceral cavities were called bellies: the lower belly being the abdomen; the middle belly, the thorax; and the upper belly, the head.

Derived terms

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: bere

Translations

See also

• abdomen
• bouk
• have eyes bigger than one's belly
• stomach
• tummy

Verb

belly (third-person singular simple present bellies, present participle bellying, simple past and past participle bellied)

1. To position one’s belly; to move on one’s belly.
   • 1903, Jack London, The Call of the Wild, Chapter 7,^[1]

     Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.

2. (intransitive) To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow.
   • 1890, Rudyard Kipling, “The Rhyme of the Three Captains,”^[2]

     The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,

   • 1914, Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Chapter 6,^[3]

     There were trees whose trunks bellied into huge swellings.

   • 1917 rev. 1925 Ezra Pound, "Canto I"

     winds from sternward

     Bore us onward with bellying canvas ...

   • 1930, Otis Adelbert Kline, The Prince of Peril, serialized in Argosy, Chapter 1,^[4]

     The building stood on a circular foundation, and its walls, instead of mounting skyward in a straight line, bellied outward and then curved in again at the top.

3. (transitive) To cause to swell out; to fill.
   • c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act II, Scene 2,^[5]

     Your breath of full consent bellied his sails;

   • 1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, Chapter I, I,^[6]

     A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom.

Derived terms

• bellying
• belly out
• belly up

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?va?t?lz/

Noun

vitals pl (plural only)

1. (plural only) Those organs of the body that are essential for life.
2. (plural only, figuratively) Those parts of a system without which it cannot function.
3. (medicine, plural only) Vital signs.

Quotations

• 1827 Ann Hasseltine Judson - An account of the American Baptist mission to the Burman empire

  they were ripped open from the lowest to the highest extremity of the stomach, and their vitals and part of their bowels were hanging out

• 2003 David R Woodward - Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917-1918

  This final victory can only be had by reaching the vitals of Germany and by destroying her armed forces.

• 1991 Suzy Szasz - Living With It: Why You Don't Have to Be Healthy to Be Happy

  At least once an hour a nurse came into the room, either to check on me or my roommate, or to take vitals

Derived terms

• stap my vitals

Anagrams

• vistal

Catalan

Adjective

vitals

1. plural of vital