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Origin and history of bowel

bowel(n.)

c. 1300, usually plural, bowels, "human organs of the abdominal cavity," from late 14c. specifically as "human intestines," from Old French boele "intestines, bowels, innards" (12c., Modern French boyau), from Medieval Latin botellus "small intestine," originally "sausage," diminutive of botulus "sausage," a word borrowed from Oscan-Umbrian.

The transferred sense of "the viscera as the seat of emotions" is from late 14c.; especially "inner parts as the seat of pity or kindness," hence "tenderness, compassion." Greek splankhnon (from the same PIE root as spleen) was a word for the principal internal organs, which also were felt in ancient times to be the seat of various emotions. Greek poets, from Aeschylus down, regarded the bowels as the seat of the more violent passions such as anger and love, but by the Hebrews they were seen as the seat of tender affections, especially kindness, benevolence, and compassion.

Splankhnon was used in Septuagint to translate a Hebrew word, and thence early Bibles in English rendered it in its literal sense as bowels, which thus acquired in English a secondary meaning of "pity, compassion" (late 14c.). But in later editions the word often was translated as heart. Bowel movement is attested by 1874.

also from c. 1300

Entries linking to bowel

heart(n.)

Old English heorte "heart (hollow muscular organ that circulates blood); breast, soul, spirit, will, desire; courage; mind, intellect," from Proto-Germanic *hertan- (source also of Old Saxon herta, Old Frisian herte, Old Norse hjarta, Dutch hart, Old High German herza, German Herz, Gothic hairto), from PIE root *kerd- "heart."

Spelling with -ea- is c. 1500, reflecting what then was a long vowel, and the spelling remained when the pronunciation shifted. Most of the modern figurative senses were present in Old English, including "memory" (from the notion of the heart as the seat of all mental faculties, now only in by heart, which is from late 14c.), "seat of inmost feelings; will; seat of emotions, especially love and affection; seat of courage." Meaning "inner part of anything" is from early 14c. In reference to the conventional heart-shape in illustration, late 15c.; heart-shaped is from 1744.

Heart attack attested from 1875; heart disease is from 1864. The card game hearts is so called from 1886. To have one's heart in the right place "mean well" is from 1774. Heart and soul "one's whole being" is from 1650s. To eat (one's own) heart "waste away with grief, resentment, etc." is from 1580s.

spleen(n.)

c. 1300, splen, "non-glandular organ of the abdomen of a human or animal," also as the seat of melancholy, from Old French esplen, from Latin splen, from Greek splēn "the milt, spleen," from PIE *spelghn- "spleen, milt" (source also of Sanskrit plihan-, Avestan sperezan, Armenian p'aicaln, Latin lien, Old Church Slavonic slezena, Czech slezna, Lithuanian blužnis, Old Prussian blusne, Old Irish selg "spleen"). But the exact reconstruction is unclear.

The organ was regarded in old medicine as the seat of morose feelings and bad temper. Hence figurative sense of "violent ill-temper" (1580s, implied in spleenful); and thence Chapman's spleenless "mild, gentle; free from anger, ill-humor, malice, or spite" (1610s, in the literal sense from late 14c.), for which compare Greek eusplanchnos "having healthy intestines," also "compassionate."

A burst of adjectival forms in late 16c.-early 17c. for the figurative meaning yielded spleenative (1592), spleenatic (1621), spleenish (1610s), spleenful (1588), spleeny (1604), and later Keats uses spleenical.