A.Word.A.Day --visceral

A.Word.A.Day

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Jul 17, 2023

This week’s theme
Words derived from body parts

This week’s words
visceral
blood-and-guts
hamstring
chopped liver
heart-whole

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

Previous week’s theme
Skunk words

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Science and technology have advanced, but Fantastic Voyage remains fiction. We will land a human ship on Mars before we can take a miniature submersible and travel inside veins, arteries, and inner organs.

Meanwhile, we’ll do the closest we can get to it: take a metaphorical trip. We have visited parts of the human body many times (1, 2, 3, 4) in the past. This week, we’ll visit some of the inner parts of the body that have become metaphors in the English language.

visceral

PRONUNCIATION:

(VIS-uhr-uhl)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Related to viscera.
2. Instinctive, not reasoning or intellectual.
3. Dealing with base emotions; earthy, crude.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin viscera (internal organs), plural of viscus (flesh). From the belief that viscera were the seat of emotions. Earliest documented use: 1575.

USAGE:

“The movie is less visceral than the book, omitting scenes of a turtle and a shark being butchered on the lifeboat.”
Brian D. Johnson; A New Life for Pi; Maclean’s (Toronto, Canada); Nov 7, 2012.

“They endured visceral racial hostility openly expressed, doors slammed in their faces when they sought jobs and accommodations, and disheartening signs: ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs.’”
Barrington M. Salmon; The Queen is Dead. Maybe the Monarchy Needs to Die, Too; Washington Informer; Sep 15, 2022.

See more usage examples of visceral in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. -Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (17 Jul 1921-1944)

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