gut.

1. To remove or destroy the inside of a building or other structure while leaving an outer shell.

2. To remove an animal’s internal organs, especially while preparing it as food.

3. The digestive tract, or informally the belly containing it.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• gut a building
• a gutted interior
• a fire guts a house

On the page

The fire gutted the theater but left the painted entrance almost intact.

Workers had gutted the house before she arrived to collect the books.

He gutted the fish beside the river, keeping his eyes on the opposite bank.

The gutted carcass hung beneath a sheet in the cold room.

The article explained how bacteria live in the gut.

Usage notes

Verb: gut, guts, gutted, gutted, gutting. Noun: gut, guts; courage and inner parts often require plural guts. Gut as instrument-string material is uncountable. Gut reaction is an attributive use; it does not make gut a separate idiom entry. Register: neutral. Commonness: common; courage, belly, and inner-parts uses informal (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).