viscus

From Latin viscus (“any internal organ of the body”), perhaps akin to viscid.

• 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.
• “viscus”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “viscus”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

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

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈu̯iːs.kus/, [ˈu̯iːs̠kʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈvis.kus/, [ˈviskus]
• The long ī in the first syllable (given by Gaffiot (1934) and De Vaan (2008)) is supported per Ernout and Meillet by the use of i longa in inscriptions.[2]

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

1. 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.)

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

• ēvīscerō
• vīscerālis
• vīscerātim
• vīscerātiō
• vīscereus

• vīscum

• → English: viscera
• → French: viscères
• → Portuguese: víscera
• → Spanish: víscera

• “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
• 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