To remove the bowels or intestines from something; to disembowel or eviscerate.
From 'de-' (to remove) + 'bowel' (intestine). Related to the archaic 'embowel'. Used in older texts to describe both the butchering of animals and a violent fate in literature.
This grim verb appears in older English literature as a fate worse than death, showing how medieval and Renaissance writers were fixated on visceral imagery as the ultimate violation. It's basically the original 'disembowel' but less common today.
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