The act of removing the bowels or intestines from something, or metaphorically, removing the essential contents or strength from something.
From dis- (prefix meaning to undo or reverse) + bowel (from Old French 'boel' meaning intestine, from Latin 'botellus'). The -ing suffix makes it a present participle.
This brutal verb appears in historical accounts of punishment and medieval writing—it's one of those words that reveals how viscerally specific old English could be about violence, using body parts as metaphors for completeness.
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