yellow-bellied
Americanadjective
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having a yellow abdomen or underside.
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Slang. cowardly; lily-livered.
Etymology
Origin of yellow-bellied
First recorded in 1700–10
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.
We then used this index to gain insights about the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots.
From Salon
Documented examples have included California condors, Komodo dragons and yellow-bellied water snakes.
From Seattle Times
According to Daniel Blumstein, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies longevity in yellow-bellied marmots and was not involved in the new study, connecting social genes to longevity was intriguing.
From Scientific American
And I hid from it like a yellow-bellied coward, keeping my mind on figures when it wasn’t wandering back to the musical note Anemone Cordimas put at the end of my name.
From Literature
Some squirrel species — the yellow-bellied marmot, for example — have been found to benefit from being less social.
From Washington Post
Definitions 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.
