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paunch

UK/pɔːnt͡ʃ/US/pɔːnt͡ʃ/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,131 of 15,258leans spoken

A paunch is a fat protruding belly. A middle-aged paunch, develop a paunch, pat his paunch.

It is unkind but not brutal, and it is used almost entirely of men. The word is also the technical term for a ruminant's first stomach, and in butchery to paunch an animal is to remove the guts.

Definitions of paunch

  1. 1nounpaunchA fat protruding belly.C1

    “After years of beer and takeaways, he had developed quite a paunch.”

paunch is a belly.

Where it comes from

Old French pance comes from Latin pantex, the belly or bowels.

  1. Latin

    pantex

  2. Old French

    pance

  3. fro-nor

    panche

  4. Middle English

    paunche

  5. English, today

    paunch

From Middle English paunche, from fro-nor panche, Old French pance (French panse), from Latin pantex.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

paunch in the wild

  • According to Herwig Wolfram, Wamba means "big paunch" in Gothic (like German: "Wampe", cognate to English "womb") and may have been a nickname.

    Wamba (king)

  • The rumen, also known as a paunch, is the largest stomach compartment in ruminants.

    Rumen

  • La Panza derives from a Spanish word for paunch of beef, that Californio hunters used to lure bears.

    La Panza, California

  • The location was recorded in 1828, with the name paraje la panza (the paunch place).

    La Panza, California

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.