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bowel

UK/ˈbaʊ.əl/US/ˈbaʊ.əl/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,349 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: bowels

The bowel is the long tube in the body that food passes through after the stomach. Bowel cancer, empty the bowel, bowel movement.

It is about seven metres long in an adult and does most of the absorbing of nutrients and water. Bowel cancer is among the most survivable when caught early, which is why screening programmes exist. The Latin behind it is botulus, a sausage.

Indolences created it on the English Wikipedia. This SVG image was created by Medium69. Cette image SVG a été créée par Medium69. Please credit this : William Crochot · Public domain

Definitions of bowel

  1. 1nounbowelThe intestine, the tube food passes through after the stomach.B2

    “The doctor said the pain was caused by a problem in her bowel.”

bowel is an organ.

Where it comes from

Old French boiel comes from Latin botellus, a little sausage, from botulus, a sausage. Botulism is from the same sausage.

  1. Latin

    botellus

  2. Old French

    boiel

  3. Middle French

    bouel

  4. English, today

    bowel

Built from

  • botulus · Latin — sausage

Borrowed from Middle French bouel, from Old French boiel, from Latin botellus, diminutive of botulus (“sausage”). a doublet of boyau.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

bowel in the wild

  • Surgery is kept to a minimum whenever possible, but it is sometimes essential for treating abscesses, certain bowel obstructions, and cancers.

    Crohn's disease

  • The normal frequency of bowel movements in adults is between three per day and three per week.

    Constipation

  • Babies often have three to four bowel movements per day while young children typically have two to three per day.

    Constipation

  • Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowel movements, weight loss, abdominal pain, and fatigue.

    Colorectal cancer

  • The first description of the condition was in 1820, while the current term irritable bowel syndrome came into use in 1944.

    Irritable bowel syndrome

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the botellus family

puddingbowel

bowel — used about once every 918 pages · #4,349 · point at the bar for the others