intestine

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The portion of the alimentary canal extending from the stomach to the anus and, in humans and other mammals, consisting of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. Often used in the plural.
2. adj. Internal; civil: the intestine affairs of the nation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Internal; inward; pertaining to the interior part of something.
2. Inner; innate; inborn.
3. Internal with regard to a company, community, or nation; domestic: usually applied to what is evil: as, intestine feuds.
4. n. In anatomy, the lower part of the alimentary canal, extending from the pyloric end of the stomach to the anus; gut; bowel: in popular use usually in the plural: the guts; bowels; entrails. In a wider sense, in biology, the term is also used to include the whole alimentary canal or enteron. (See alimentary and enteron.) In man, as in other vertebrates and many invertebrates, the intestine is the tube into which partly digested food is received from the stomach, for the completion of the digestive process by the action upon the food of certain secretions (as the hepatic, pancreatic, and intestinal), the drawing off of the assimilable material by the blood-vessels and lacteals, and the ejection of the refuse or non-assimilable substances, as feces or excrement, by the anus. The length of the human intestine is five or six times that of the body, such extent representing, perhaps, an average of relative length; the intestine is generally shorter in carnivorous animals, and longer in those which are herbivorous. It is a museulomembranous tube invested with a peritoneal coat, lined with mucous membrane, and having in its walls both longitudinal and circular muscular fibers. It lies coiled in many convolutions in the abdomen, the coils being freely movable, though the tube as a whole is held in place by mesenteric folds of peritoneum. Into it are poured the secretions of the liver and pancreas, as well as those Of its own numerous glandular structures. The character of the tube in man and mammals generally has caused its division into a small and a large intestine. The former extends from the pylorus to the iliocæcal valve, and is subdivided into duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. The latter consists of the cæcum or head of the colon, with its appendix vermiformis; of the colon proper, divided into ascending, transverse, and descending; and of the rectum or straight gut, continued from the descending colon by the sigmoid flexure. The small intestine is smoothly and simply tubular; the large is more or less extensively sacculated. This distinction does not hold as a rule below mammals, in many of which, also, the cæcum is of comparatively enormous extent. Thus, in birds, in which there are commonly a pair of cæca, the site of these organs marks the only distinction between the preceding and succeeding portions of the tube. In many lower vertebrates, as fishes, cæca may be very numerous, and situated near the pylorus. In all vertebrates the cavity of the intestine is primitively continuous with that of the umbilical vesicle, and in those which have an allantois with the cavity of that organ. In its simplest possible form the intestine represents the interior of a gastrula. See cut under gastrula.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Domestic; taking place within a given country or region.
2. adj. obsolete Internal.
3. n. anatomy, often pluralized The alimentary canal of an animal through which food passes after having passed all stomachs.
4. n. One of certain subdivisions of this part of the alimentary canal, such as the small or large intestine in human beings.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Internal; inward; -- opposed to external.
2. adj. Internal with regard to a state or country; domestic; not foreign; -- applied usually to that which is evil
3. adj. Depending upon the internal constitution of a body or entity; subjective.
4. adj. rare Shut up; inclosed.
5. n. (Anat.) That part of the alimentary canal between the stomach and the anus. See Illust. of Digestive apparatus.
6. n. The bowels; entrails; viscera.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the part of the alimentary canal between the stomach and the anus