viscus

From Latin vīscus (“any internal organ of the body”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɪskəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Homophone: viscous
• Rhymes: -ɪskəs

viscus (plural viscera)

1. (anatomy) One of the organs, as the brain, heart, or stomach, in the great cavities of the body of an animal; especially used in the plural, and applied to the organs contained in the abdomen.
2. (anatomy, specifically) The intestines.

• entrails
• innards
• intestines
• offal

• eviscerate
• visceral

• viscus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• viscous

• “viscus”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “viscus”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “viscus”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Of unclear origin;^[1] possibly Proto-Indo-European *weys- (“to turn, rotate”).

Compare typologically vulva < Proto-Indo-European *welH-, whence also volvō and many others.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈwiːs.kʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈvis.kus]
• The long ī in the first syllable (given by Georges (1913/1918) and De Vaan (2008), but not by Gaffiot (1934)) is supported per Ernout and Meillet by the use of i longa in inscriptions.^[2]

vīscus n (genitive vīsceris); third declension (chiefly plural)

1. organ (any internal organ of the body)
2. (anatomy) entrails, viscera, bowels, internal organs

   Synonyms: intestīnum, interāneum, exta, prōsicium, prōsecta, hīllae

   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 6.180–182:

     terra fabās tantum dūraque farra dabat.
     quae duo mixta simul sextīs quīcumque Kalendīs
     ēderit, huic laedī vīscera posse negant.

     The land yielded only beans and hard far. Whoever, on the Kalends of the sixth [months], eats these two [foods] mixed together, they say no harm will [come] to this [person’s] bowels.
     (The first day of June was the Kalendae fabariae or Bean-Kalends.)

3. (figuratively) the innermost part of something, as the heart and vital organs are to the body
   • 63 BCE, Cicero, Catiline Orations Oratio in Catilinam Prima in Senatu Habita.31:

     Quodsī ex tantō latrōciniō iste ūnus tollētur, vidēbimur fortasse ad breve quoddam tempus cūrā et metū esse relevātī, perīculum autem residēbit et erit inclūsum penitus in vēnīs atque in vīsceribus reī pūblicae.

     But if that single individual is removed from such a great band of brigands, we shall perhaps seem to be relieved of our worry and fear for a certain short time, but the danger will remain and will be shut up deeply within the veins and in the bowels of the Republic.

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

• ēvīscerō
• vīscerālis
• vīscerātim
• vīscerātiō f
• vīscereus

• vīscum

• → English: viscus, viscera
• → Middle French: vixere m, vixeres m pl
  • French: viscère m
    • →? Romanian: viscere n pl
• →? Italian: viscere m
• → Portuguese: víscera f
• → Spanish: víscera f

• “viscus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “viscus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• 1. vīscus in Georges, Karl Ernst; Georges, Heinrich (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th edition, volume 2, Hahnsche Buchhandlung
• “viscus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Roberts, Edward A. (2014), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language with Families of Words based on Indo-European Roots, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN