disembowel
Americanverb (used with object)
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disembowels,
present (3rd person singular)
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disemboweled,
past participle, past
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disembowelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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disemboweling,
present participle
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disembowelling
present participle (especially British)
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to remove the bowels or entrails from; eviscerate.
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to cut or slash open the abdomen of, as by bayoneting, so as to expose or remove the viscera.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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disembowelsimple
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disembowelssimple
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have disemboweledperfect
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have disembowelledperfect
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has disemboweledperfect
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has disembowelledperfect
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am disembowelingprogressive
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am disembowellingprogressive
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are disembowelingprogressive
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are disembowellingprogressive
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is disembowelingprogressive
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is disembowellingprogressive
-
have been disembowelingperfect progressive
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have been disembowellingperfect progressive
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has been disembowelingperfect progressive
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has been disembowellingperfect progressive
Past
-
disemboweledsimple
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disembowelledsimple
-
had disemboweledperfect
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had disembowelledperfect
-
was disembowelingprogressive
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was disembowellingprogressive
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were disembowelingprogressive
-
were disembowellingprogressive
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had been disembowelingperfect progressive
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had been disembowellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of disembowel
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Since she’s played by Frances McDormand, the most famous face in the cast and an actor who could disembowel the patriarchy in her sleep, the abruptness of her departure feels particularly pointed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 22, 2022
Teams of workers snap laptops in half, smash screens, disembowel computers, and cripple keyboards.
From The Verge ● Jun. 22, 2016
But The Revenant, which called for him to wear several yards of beard, disembowel a bison, and crawl wearily through miles of ice fields, has surely done the trick.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 16, 2015
The New York Public Library wanted to disembowel its historic building at 42nd Street before thinking better of it.
From New York Times ● Jul. 30, 2014
According to Petherick, they do not disdain dead animals, whose carcasses they disembowel with their powerful hooked beak.
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 by Various
In . . . intervals passive, idling and greedy, she munches apples . . . disembowels chocolate eclairs arranges the fire . . lights some sticks of what she calls 'smell-good.'
From Time Magazine Archive
He disembowels it, scrutinizing the internal evidences of its structure and history, and thence infers the causes of past vicissitudes, existing relations, and appearances.
From An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" With a Notice of the Author's "Explanations:" A Sequel to the Vestiges by Anonymous
Once the kill is made, the lion disembowels the beast very neatly indeed, and drags the entrails a few feet out of the way.
From The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White
The queen bee does not eat her mate, but she disembowels him.
From Under the Maples by John Burroughs
A taxidermist of the Past, Present and Future; one who disembowels, stuffs and mounts all the gods, living and dead; one who fills up with straw and sawdust all illusions.
From The Roycroft Dictionary Concocted by Ali Baba and the Bunch on Rainy Days. by Elbert Hubbard
Keck’s horizontal equestrian sculpture, which intimates occupation of the land, became Walker’s vertical, a grotesque standing humanoid, disemboweled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2025
Director and screenwriter Scott Cooper builds tension with a series of seemingly unconnected clues — a note fragment, a military jacket missing a decoration, some animals disemboweled.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 6, 2023
It was, I realized, a textbook illustration of the deep-seated dislike many men have for leopard print—the fear that they, too, might be disemboweled and displayed by the woman in the glistening pelt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2018
Signs continue to forbid eating and drinking in stores, though the stores were long ago gutted of merchandise and the food court was similarly disemboweled.
From New York Times ● Jul. 25, 2018
I found some straws that need to be disemboweled.
From "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway
As Lebanon marks the 47th anniversary of the start of the war on Wednesday, Ghassan's daughter and other relatives of those killed in the blast are fighting government plans to demolish the disembowelled silos.
From Reuters ● Apr. 13, 2022
Hill sides were strewn with debris and dotted by houses disembowelled by the storms powerful winds.
From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2017
It is disembowelled without the hide being taken off, and, since there can be no hide, there can be no quarry.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
I can give him up my own bedroom, and sleep myself in an old harpsichord, which I bought cheap at a sale, and disembowelled into a species of deceptive bed.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, December 25, 1841 by Various
The Post Office still stood, but the roof was gone and the inside of it was empty: a hulk, a disembowelled carcase....
From Changing Winds A Novel by St. John G. (St. John Greer) Ervine
I know I wasn't supposed to, but the second time I watched the emotionally disemboweling prestige weeper "Dear Edward," the Apple TV+ adaptation of Ann Napolitano's best-selling 2020 novel, I thought of Prince Harry.
From Salon ● Feb. 26, 2023
“But elephants are also living tanks, capable of killing, disemboweling, knocking down houses, and eating a farmer’s entire crop for the season. Human-elephant conflict can go both ways.”
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2022
As usual, Signor Mussolini managed in his discourse to turn several familiar ideas inside out, disemboweling them with hearty, ogrish gust.
From Time Magazine Archive
The grim allegory, showing a U.S. soldier disemboweling a Japanese Frankenstein monster behind which looms an equally monstrous Nazi ogre, is the largest of seven pictures just completed by Artist Thomas Hart Benton.
From Time Magazine Archive
Strange, but it felt normal to be disemboweling fish together.
From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen
Man consumes the treasures of the earth faster than he produces them, deforesting its surface and disembowelling its hidden wealth.
From The Constitution of the United States A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution by James M. (James Montgomery) Beck
The filial hero varies this a little, when "disembowelling" the Algerine commander, by requesting the Deity to "have pity on" his parent—a proceeding faintly suggestive of a survival in his mind of the human-sacrifice period.
From A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800 by George Saintsbury
He looked over to Nap, who fiercely battled with a sofa cushion, and was now disembowelling it through a rent in the cover.
From Bunker Bean by Harry Leon Wilson
The dim twilight of early morning found him poking about, like a solitary ghoul, disembowelling the pillar posts.
From Post Haste by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
On either hand, at every hundred yards, instead of the houseless, disembowelling paepaes of Nuka-hiva, populous houses turned out their inhabitants to cry “Kaoha!” to the passers-by.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson
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