eviscerate

American  

[ih-vis-uh-reyt, ih-vis-er-it, -uh-reyt] / ɪˈvɪs əˌreɪt, ɪˈvɪs ər ɪt, -əˌreɪt /

verb (used with object)

• eviscerates,
  present (3rd person singular)
• eviscerated,
  past participle,  past
• eviscerating
  present participle

1. to remove the entrails from; disembowel.

   to eviscerate a chicken.

2. to deprive of vital or essential parts.

   The censors eviscerated the book to make it inoffensive to the leaders of the party.

3. Surgery. to remove the contents of (a body organ).

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eviscerate British  

/ ɪˈvɪsəˌreɪt /

verb

1. (tr) to remove the internal organs of; disembowel

2. (tr) to deprive of meaning or significance

3. (tr) surgery to remove the contents of (the eyeball or other organ)

4. (intr) surgery (of the viscera) to protrude through a weakened abdominal incision after an operation

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adjective

1. having been disembowelled

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• evisceration
  noun
• eviscerator
  noun

Inflected Forms

Participles

• eviscerating
  present
• eviscerated
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• eviscerate
  simple
• eviscerates
  simple
• have eviscerated
  perfect
• has eviscerated
  perfect
• am eviscerating
  progressive
• are eviscerating
  progressive
• is eviscerating
  progressive
• have been eviscerating
  perfect progressive
• has been eviscerating
  perfect progressive

Past

• eviscerated
  simple
• had eviscerated
  perfect
• was eviscerating
  progressive
• were eviscerating
  progressive
• had been eviscerating
  perfect progressive

Future

• will eviscerate
  simple
• will have eviscerated
  perfect
• will be eviscerating
  progressive
• will have been eviscerating
  perfect progressive

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

eviscerate eviscerates eviscerated eviscerating

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

Big business has been trying to eviscerate anti-fraud laws for more than a century.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2024

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

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

Without a single scene of jungle combat, “Absolution” eviscerates the systems behind the Vietnam War.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2023

Popular culture — an important element in his work, whether he embraces or eviscerates it — evaded him while he was growing up.

From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 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

She eviscerates moral philosophers who believe that moral rules can be utterly divorced from biology and find a foundation based on reasoning alone.

From Nature ● May 27, 2019

It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them, and devours them with frantic greed.

From Social Life in the Insect World by Miall, Bernard

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

The already precarious labor market is being eviscerated by further automation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 26, 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

The match-winning try scored by Italy utility back Leonardo Marin once again involved a line-break in the 10-metre channel - a microcosm of England's vulnerabilities out wide after being eviscerated there by Scotland and Ireland.

From BBC ● Mar. 13, 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

They melt down publicly, with Moore’s Linda famously eviscerating a suspicious pharmacist, and privately, with Cruise’s Frank raging at the dying of his father’s light.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 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

But in an opinion on Tuesday eviscerating his assertion, three federal appeals court judges portrayed his position as not only wrong on the law but also repellent.

From New York Times ● Feb. 6, 2024

Culturally and overall, we've fallen into a trap as a society where we think we can just keep eviscerating services and it's going to be fine.

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2023

Thus caught between two fires the casuists developed a highly ingenious method, not unlike that of the Roman Stoics, for eviscerating the substance of a rule while leaving its shadow carefully intact.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 4 "Carnegie Andrew" to "Casus Belli" by Various