bellying
bellying is the present participle and gerund of belly.
Meaning of belly
Verb
belly (third-person singular simple present bellies, present participle bellying, simple past and past participle bellied)
- To position one’s belly; to move on one’s belly.
- Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.1903 July, Jack London, “The Sounding of the Call”, in The Call of the Wild, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 220
- To swell and become protuberant; to bulge or billow.
- The Pow'r appeaſ'd, with Winds ſuffic'd the Sail, / The bellying Canvaſs ſtrutted with the Gale; […]1700, [John] Dryden, “Homer’s Ilias”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, book I, page 213
- To cause to swell out; to fill.
- Your breath of full consent bellied his sails; […]c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
Adjective
bellying (not comparable)
- Bulging or billowing.
- Did it change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle of air from the leech of the bellying sail?1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 9, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC
- And the light mounts over the faces of all the tall blind houses, slides through a chink and paints the lustrous bellying crimson curtains […]1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 12, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC
Noun
bellying (plural bellyings)
- A bulging, swelling or billowing shape; the act or state of bulging, swelling or billowing.
- But the Principal Ornament of the Pagodes, is to be accompanied, as generally they are, with several Pyramids of Lime and Brick […] Some there are which diminish and grow thick again four or five times in their heighth, so that the Profile of them goes waving: But these Bellyings out are smaller as...1693, Simon de la Loubère, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, translated by A.P., London: Tho. Horne, Part II, Chapter II. Of the Houses of the Siamese, and of their Architecture in...
- A few minutes later the brightness over; one great dull rope coiling overhead sidelong from the sunset, its dewlaps and bellyings painted with a maddery campion-colour that seemed to stoop and drop like sopped cake;1873, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Sunset,” Diary entry dated 3 November, 1873, in The Dublin Review, July, August, September, 1920, p. 64
- Synonyms:
- bulge, convexity, gibbosity, protrusion, protuberance
Synonyms of bellying
Forms of bellying
| plural | bellyings |
|---|
Origin of bellying
By surface analysis, belly + -ing.
Phrases with bellying
Questions about bellying
- What does bellying mean?
- Bellying means bulging or billowing.
- What is bellying the present participle and gerund of?
- Bellying is the present participle and gerund of belly.
- What part of speech is bellying?
- Bellying can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near bellying in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bellying (page history and authors); belly (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: “bellying.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bellying. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.