1609. Dekker, Gul’s Horne-Booke, chap. ii. The Neapolitan will
(like Derick, the hangman) embrace you with one arme, and rip your
guts with the other.
1640. Rawlins, The Rebellion, iii. (Dodsley, Old Plays, 4th ed.,
1875, xiv., 48). Thou hast a gut could swallow a peck loaf.
1661. Brome, Poems, ‘A Satire on the Rebellion.’ The grumbling
guts, the belly of the State.
1713. Bentley, On Free Thinking, sect. 53. What then was our
writer’s soul? Was it brain or guts?
1754. Fielding, Jonathan Wild, bk. iv., c. 1. But so it was that
the knife, missing these noble parts (the noblest of many) the
guts, perforated only the hollow of his belly.
1787. Burns, Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 27. A countra Laird had
ta’en the batts, Or some curmurring in his guts.
3. in. pl. (old).—A fat man; a forty-guts (q.v.). Also
Guts-and-garbage. More Guts (also More Balls) than Brains = a fool.
1598. Shakspeare, Henry IV., pt. 1, ii., 2. Peace, ye fat-guts.
1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Gutts, a very fat gross Person.
4. (artists’ and colloquial).—Spirit; quality; a touch of force, or
energy, or fire: e.g., a picture, a book, an actor. With guts = a
strong thing. Put your guts into it (aquatic) = Row the very best you
can. He (or it) has no guts in him (or it) = He (or it) is a common
rotter (q.v.). Hence, Gutsy, adj. = having guts, and Gutsiness, subs. =
the condition of being gutsy.
1738. Swift, Polite Conversation, I. The fellow’s well enough if he
had any guts in his brain.
1893. Pall Mall Budget. No. 1292 (June 29), 1906. The body of the
cigar, or what might vulgarly be called the guts.
Verb (vulgar).—1. To plunder, or take out all or most of the contents
(i.e., intestines) of a place or thing; to drain; to ‘clean out’: e.g.,
to gut a house (thieves’) = to rifle it; to gut an oyster = to eat it;
to gut a book = to empty it of interesting matter; to gut a quart pot =
to drain at a draught. Whence, Gutted = dead-broke.
1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
1819. Moore, Tom Crib, p. 1. Whether diddling your subjects or
gutting their jobs.
1849–61. Macaulay, Hist. of England. The king’s printing-house ...
was, to use a coarse metaphor, which then for the first time came
into fashion, completely gutted.
1892. R. L. Stevenson and L. Osbourne, The Wrecker, p. 373. Well,
we’ve got the guts out of you!