entrails

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English entraille,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French entraille, chiefly in the plural entrailles,^[5][6][7] with the Anglo-Norman spellings entraile and entreil.^[5][8] Skeat notes that the Old French word was a feminine singular made from a Latin neuter plural.^[9] It comes from Medieval Latin intrālia (“inner parts, intestines”),^[10][11][12] which Barnhart and Etymonline call Late Latin,^[6][7] and which Klein finds in the Reichenau Glosses of the end of the 8th century.^[4] That form is an alteration of Latin interānea (“internal things, intestines”),^[10][11][3] the neuter plural used as a noun of interāneus (“internal”),^[11][6][7] from inter (“between, among”),^[7][4] with a suffix like that of extrāneus (“external”).^[3][6] Etymonline explains the change as the influence of the Latin neuter plural ending -ālia,^[7] and Dictionary.com likewise as a change of suffix, reconstructing Vulgar Latin *interālia.^[13] Unaltered, the Latin word gave Late Latin intrania, hence Spanish entrañas and Old French entraigne.^[7] Etymonline takes the Latin preposition from Proto-Indo-European *enter (“between, among”), a comparative of the root Proto-Indo-European *en (“in”).^[7][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The internal organs of a person or animal, as a collective singular: about 1330, in the Short Metrical Chronicle.^[5] Barnhart finds entraile for the inner parts of the body probably before 1300, in Kyng Alisaunder,^[6] and Etymonline dates the word to about 1300.^[7] Anglo-Norman already used it from the early 12th century for the bowels and also for a person's innermost being.^[8][5]

Semantic evolution

Ayto stresses that the root idea, "insides", has run through the word's whole history, as in entrails of the earth.^[14] The Old French word had first meant the fatty part of a bovine animal's internal organs, in the 11th century, before it came to mean the viscera generally.^[5] In English the sense "intestines" is recorded from 1373,^[6] and the Wycliffite Bible already treats the entrails as the seat of feeling and thought.^[5] Figurative use for the inner parts of anything appears about 1380 in Chaucer's translation of Boethius.^[5] From 1571 the word could also mean the vital or deepest part of something abstract, a use rare after the 17th century.^[5] Johnson (1755) gave two senses, "the intestines" and "the internal parts; recess; caverns", quoting Locke on "the dark entrails of America".^[15] The OED calls the old collective singular somewhat rare in later use.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1330 – the collective singular, the internal organs.^[5] Barnhart dates entraile probably before 1300, in Kyng Alisaunder.^[6]
• 1373 – specifically the intestines.^[6]
• c. 1380 – the inner parts of something, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius.^[5]
• before 1382 – the plural, for the viscera, in the Wycliffite Bible.^[5] Barnhart finds the plural entrailles before 1325, in the Cursor Mundi.^[6]
• before 1382 – the viscera as the seat of emotion and thought.^[5]
• c. 1425 – singular entrail, one intestine.^[5]
• 1571 – the vital or deepest part of something abstract.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The internal organs of a person or animal, especially the intestines; the bowels, guts or viscera: The hunters left the deer's entrails for the foxes.^[16][3][5]
2. The innermost parts of anything: He spread the entrails of the old radio across the bench.^[16][3][5]
3. A person's insides thought of as the seat of feeling and thought.^[5]

Related words

• interior
• enteric

Usage notes

The word is almost always plural: Johnson (1755) described it as "without a singular",^[15] and Merriam-Webster labels the singular entrail archaic.^[3] The obsolete verb entrail, to entwine, has a different origin, apparently en- and trail.^[5]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Mayhew, A. L.; Skeat, Walter W. (1888), A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
15. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins