Other forms: belching, belches, belched
To belch is to let wind up noisily from the stomach. Belch loudly, a loud belch, belching smoke.
It is the older and blunter word where burp is the newer and milder one. Of a chimney or a volcano it means to send out great clouds — belching smoke — which is a vivid and common figurative use. Note that belch is Old English and imitative, and that burp is a twentieth-century American coinage doing the same job more politely.
1verbbelchTo let wind up noisily from the stomach.
“He drank his cola too fast and belched loudly at the dinner table.”
2verbsendTo send out great clouds of smoke.
“Factory chimneys belched black smoke into the sky.”
belch is a release of gas.
Old English bielcan is Germanic and probably imitative. Dutch balken, to bray, and Low German belken, to shout, come from the same noise.
Proto-Germanic
*balkijaną
Old English
bielċan
Middle English
belchen
English, today
belch
From Middle English belchen, from Old English bielċan, from Proto-Germanic balkijaną, belkaną, probably ultimately of imitative of the sound origin. Related to Dutch balken (“to bray”), Middle Low German belken (“to shout”), Low German bölken (“to shout, bark”), Old English bealċettan (“to utter, send forth”). See also English bolk, boak.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire