Word.ws English Dictionary

bellyaching

bellyaching noun: whining and complaining, often contrived to evoke pity or shirk responsibility. Also the present participle and gerund of bellyache.

Noun

bellyaching (countable and uncountable, plural bellyachings)

  1. Whining and complaining, often contrived to evoke pity or shirk responsibility.
    • Quit your bellyaching and get back to work!
    • "What the hell is the matter with you? You made your choice. What're you bellyachin' for? …"1924 July [1923 August], Samuel Badisch Ornitz, “Sixth Period”, in Haunch Paunch and Jowl, eighth printing, New York, N.Y.: Boni and Liveright, section I, page 265

Also used as

bellyaching is also the present participle and gerund of bellyache.

Forms of bellyaching

pluralbellyachings
alternative formbelly-aching

Questions about bellyaching

What does bellyaching mean?
Bellyaching means whining and complaining, often contrived to evoke pity or shirk responsibility.
What part of speech is bellyaching?
Bellyaching is a noun.
What is the plural of bellyaching?
The plural of bellyaching is bellyachings.

Words near bellyaching in the dictionary

  1. bellyache weed
  2. bellyached
  3. bellyacher
  4. bellyachers
  5. bellyaches
  6. bellyaching
  7. bellyachings
  8. bellyake
  9. bellyakes
  10. bellyband
  11. bellybands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bellyaching (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bellyaching.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bellyaching. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.