eviscerate
Americanverb (used with object)
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eviscerates,
present (3rd person singular)
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eviscerated,
past participle, past
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eviscerating
present participle
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to remove the entrails from; disembowel.
to eviscerate a chicken.
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to deprive of vital or essential parts.
The censors eviscerated the book to make it inoffensive to the leaders of the party.
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Surgery. to remove the contents of (a body organ).
verb
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(tr) to remove the internal organs of; disembowel
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(tr) to deprive of meaning or significance
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(tr) surgery to remove the contents of (the eyeball or other organ)
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(intr) surgery (of the viscera) to protrude through a weakened abdominal incision after an operation
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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evisceratesimple
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evisceratessimple
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have evisceratedperfect
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has evisceratedperfect
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am evisceratingprogressive
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are evisceratingprogressive
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is evisceratingprogressive
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have been evisceratingperfect progressive
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has been evisceratingperfect progressive
Past
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evisceratedsimple
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had evisceratedperfect
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was evisceratingprogressive
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were evisceratingprogressive
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had been evisceratingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of eviscerate
First recorded in 1600–10; from Latin ēviscerātus, past participle of ēviscerāre “to deprive of entrails, tear to pieces,” equivalent to ē- e- 1 + viscer(a) viscera + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
Eviscerate is not a pretty word. To eviscerate can mean to remove the entrails of a creature. On the Discovery Channel you can watch a vulture eviscerate or take out the guts of a dead animal. The word eviscerate comes from the Latin eviscerare, meaning "to disembowel." It's not strictly used in such a gruesome sense though. Sure, you can eviscerate a chicken by gutting its insides, but eviscerate can also be used to describe when you deprive something of its most important quality. If you take away the disco ball, it could eviscerate the spirit of your dance party.
Vocabulary lists containing eviscerate
The Things They Carried
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" (1967)
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"On the Vietnam War, 1967," Vocabulary from the speech
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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:
If something went awry, as things generally did, Jobs would find a scapegoat to eviscerate, preferably in front of everyone else.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 17, 2026
She rarely shows up in viral clips because she doesn’t tend to eviscerate anyone or lose it on air.
From Slate ● May 15, 2024
Corker noted the NCAA’s contention that allowing so-called NIL collectives to offer deals to recruits would eviscerate the difference between college athletics and professional sports.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 23, 2024
Melt caves will eviscerate more and more glaciers—creating lakes that could release devastating floods.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 10, 2024
He didn’t know anyone who could eviscerate someone with words quite like Aunt Hila.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
As is often the case, she speaks for the audience as the show knowingly eviscerates its male characters’ macho toxicity.
From New York Times ● Nov. 26, 2021
The culminating tussle causes massive damage on screen, but it’s the heavy CGI that truly eviscerates whatever drama might be had.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2021
Good luck trying to look away while she eviscerates the institution.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 18, 2021
Pierceson Coody steps in first and tees his ball, then eviscerates a drive that, when it finally lands, bounces and disappears over a ripple in the fairway some 315 yards away.
From Golf Digest ● Dec. 2, 2019
It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them, and devours them with frantic greed.
From Social Life in the Insect World by Bernard Miall
When Callum McGregor eviscerated his own team-mates in the wake of Celtic's stupefying Champions League collapse against LASK, he delivered their one coherent moment of a spineless night.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
Days after a classicist who translated Homer’s “The Odyssey” in 2017 eviscerated the Christopher Nolan film based on the poem, Joyce Carol Oates has entered the debate.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026
But she’s overwrought in saying Section 2 is now eviscerated.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 29, 2026
Courts have allowed the broad electronic privacy protections in the federal Wiretap Act to be eviscerated by companies claiming consent.
From Salon ● Apr. 23, 2026
They'll be quoted, parsed, fact-checked, eviscerated by those who disagree, and then forgotten in the wake of new blurbs that come out tomorrow.
From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon
That one word proved surprisingly effective in eviscerating a former president known for name-calling.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2024
Sarah Paulson’s Daring Characters: The actress has received a Tony nomination for “Appropriate,” in which she portrays a woman who makes a sport out of verbally eviscerating her family members.
From New York Times ● May 19, 2024
“If we can just all agree that we don’t agree, we might make some progress instead of eviscerating each other and canceling each other.”
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 29, 2024
She said she had submitted her resignation letter to the prime minister, and published the eviscerating text on the Daily Mail's subscription service Mail+.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2023
Instead of being a volcano “close at hand,” it was Krakatoa eviscerating itself a hundred miles off, and the sound of its last grand effort “extended over 50 degrees, equal to about 3000 miles.”
From Blown to Bits The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
