Word.ws English Dictionary

embowel

/ɛmˈbaʊ.əl/

embowel verb: to remove the bowels; disembowel.

Verb

embowel (third-person singular simple present embowels, present participle (US) emboweling or (UK) embowelling, simple past and past participle (US) emboweled or (UK) embowelled)

  1. (archaic) To remove the bowels; disembowel.
    • […] So had given no direction about his body. I have cauſed it to be embowelled, and depoſited in a vault, till I have orders from England.1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter CXIII”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume VII, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by John Osborn, […], →OCLC, page 415
    • Who doubts that the fineing, whipping, torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children, guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith, had assisted the Pope and Philip, and their band of English, Scotch, and Irish conspirators, to shake Elizabeth's throne and endanger her...1867, John Lothrop Motley, Project Gutenberg History of The Netherlands, 1555–1623, Complete
  2. (obsolete) To enclose or bury.
    • [H]e therefore hastened on, and conducted Carlstadt to the spot he had recently quitted, and discovered to him a rude mishapen entrance to a flight of steps, which appeared as conducting ones to some dwelling emboweled in the earth.1807, [Miss Guion], chapter II, in The Three Germans. Mysteries Exemplified in the Life of Holstein of Lutztein. A German Romance. […], volume I, London: […] J[ames] F[letcher] Hughes, […], →OCLC...
    Synonyms:
    enclose, bury, embed, inclose

Synonyms of embowel

All synonyms of embowel

Forms of embowel

third-person singular presentembowels
present participle USemboweling
present participle UKembowelling
past participle USemboweled
past USemboweled
past participle UKembowelled
past UKembowelled
alternative form (archaic)imbowel

Origin of embowel

From em- + bowel.

Words formed from embowel

Words that rhyme with embowel

15 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about embowel

What does embowel mean?
Embowel means to remove the bowels; disembowel.
What part of speech is embowel?
Embowel is a verb.
How do you pronounce embowel?
Embowel is pronounced /ɛmˈbaʊ.əl/.
What is the past tense of embowel?
The past tense of embowel is emboweled.

Words near embowel in the dictionary

  1. embourgeoises
  2. embourgeoising
  3. embourgeoisé
  4. embow
  5. embowed
  6. embowel
  7. emboweled
  8. emboweling
  9. embowelings
  10. embowelled
  11. embowelling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: embowel (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-embowel.wav.

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