stomach

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The enlarged, saclike portion of the alimentary canal, one of the principal organs of digestion, located in vertebrates between the esophagus and the small intestine.
2. n. A similar digestive structure of many invertebrates.
3. n. Any of the four compartments into which the stomach of a ruminant is divided.
4. n. The abdomen or belly.
5. n. An appetite for food.
6. n. A desire or inclination, especially for something difficult or unpleasant: had no stomach for quarrels.
7. n. Courage; spirit.
8. n. Obsolete Pride.
9. v. To bear; tolerate.
10. v. Obsolete To resent.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The throat; the gullet; the mouth.
2. n. A more or less sac-like part of the body where food is digested. In the lowest animals any part of the sarcode or protoplasmic substance of the body is capable of digesting food, and forms during the process a temporary stomach, as in an amœba. In many infusorial animalcules special vacuoles containing food are formed. These are inconstant both in number and in position, whence Ehrenberg's name, Polygastrica, for these organisms. In the highest protozoans, which have a definite oral or ingestive area, there is likewise a more or less fixed digestive tract, constituting a stomach. A few of the metazoans have no true digestion, and consequently no stomach; such are the parenchymatous or anenterous worms, which imbibe or soak in nutriment already elaborated in the tissues of the host of which they are parasites. But the vast majority of animals above the protozoans have an intestinal digestive tract the whole or a part of which may properly be called a stomach. In most of these, again, a definite stomach exists as a specialized, usually dilated, part of the alimentary canal, in which food is subjected to a certain degree of digestion subsequent to mastication and insalivation and prior to further digestive changes which go on in the intestine. Among vertebrates more than one section of the alimentary canal is called a stomach, and many vertebrates have more than one. Thus, in birds there are a true glandular stomach, the proventriculus, in which the esophagus ends, and a muscular or grinding stomach, the gizzard or gigerium. In mammals the stomach always extends from the end of the gullet to the beginning of the gut. It is of extremely variable size and shape. Kinds of mammalian stomachs sometimes distinguished are the simple, as in man, the carnivores, etc.; the complex or plurilocular stomach, as in various marsupials, rodents, some monkeys, etc.; and the compound or pluripartite. The last is confined to the ruminants. (See Ruminantia.) In man the stomach is the most dilated and most distensible part of the alimentary canal. It occupies parts of the left hypochondriac and epigastric regions of the abdomen, immediately within the abdominal walls, below the diaphragm and partly under the liver, to the right of the spleen, and above the transverse colon. In form it is irregularly conoidal, and curved upon itself. When moderately distended, it is about 12 inches long and 4 wide; it weighs 3 or 4 ounces. But the size, shape, and hence the anatomical relations, vary greatly in different individuals and in different states of distention. It begins where the gullet ends, at the esophageal or cardiac orifice, and ends at the pyloric orifice, where the duodenum begins. From the cardiac orifice the stomach bulges to the left in a great cul-de-sac, the fundus cardiacus, or cardiac end, in contact with the spleen, and from this greatest caliber the organ lessens in diameter with a sweep to the right. The lesser curvature or short border of the stomach, between the cardiac and pyloric orifices, is uppermost, and is connected with the liver by the lesser or gastrohepatic omentum. The greater curvature or long border of the stomach is opposite the other, between the same two points, and gives attachment to the great or gastrocolic omentum. These two curvatures separate the anterior and posterior surfaces. The stomach is held in place by folds of peritoneum, the gastrocolic, gastrohepatic, gastrosplenic, and gastrophrenic omenta, the last of which gives it most fixity. The arteries of the stomach are the gastric (a branch from the celiac axis), the pyloric and right gastro-epiploic branches of the hepatic, the left gastro-epiploic, and short branches from the splenic artery. The veins end in the splenic, superior mesenteric, and portal veins. The numerous lymphatics consist of a deep set and a superficial set. The nerves are the terminal branches of both pneumogastrics and many branches from the sympathetic system. The coats of the stomach are four—serous, muscular, submucous, and mucous. The serous layer is the peritoneum, which covers the whole organ on both its surfaces, and is reflected away from it along each of its curvatures. The muscular coat includes three sets of fibers—longitudinal, circular, and oblique, the last chiefly limited to the cardia. The submucous coat is simply the connective tissue between the muscular layer and the mucous membrane lining the stomach. This mucous membrane is the so-called “coat” of the stomach. It is thick, pinkish, reddish, or brownish, with a soft velvety surface, thrown into longitudinal folds or rugæ when the organ is contracted. Studding the surface of the mucous membrane are numberless depressions or alveoli of polygonal tending to hexagonal form, to of an inch in diameter; these are the enlarged mouths of the tubular gastric glands, which secrete the gastric juice by the action of which gastric digestion is effected. Two kinds of these follicles are distinguished by their microscopic structure—the pyloric and the cardiac. The former are found chiefly at and near the pyloric end, the latter most typical at the cardiac, and there are intermediate forms in intermediate regions. The epithelium lining the mucous membrane and its alveoli is of the kind called columnar. Besides the four coats above described, a fifth, a layer of involuntary muscular fibers between the mucous membrane and the submucous layer, is distinguished as the muscularis mucosæ. The digestive activity of the stomach is intermittent, and depends upon the stimulus which the presence of food occasions. The muscular arrangement is such that food is continually rolled about, so that every part of the mass is submitted to the action of the gastric juice. In the stomach the proteids are converted into albumins and peptones by the pepsin, milk is curdled by the rennet-ferment, the gelatiniferous tissues are dissolved, and other less important changes are effected. See also cuts under alimentary, Asteroidea, Appendicularia, Dibranchiata, Doliolidæ, intestine, peritoneum, Plumatella, plutcus, Protula, Pulmonata, Pycnogonida, Ruminantia, Salpa, Tragulus, and Tunicata.
3. n. The digestive person or alimentary zooid of a compound polyp. See gasterozooid.
4. n. In most insects of the orders Lepidoptera, Diptera, and some Hymenoptera, a bladder-like expansion of the esophagus, which can be dilated at the will of the insect; the sucking-stomach, by means of which the nectar of flowers or other liquid is sucked up, as water is drawn into a syringe. In mandibulate insects the ingluvies or crop takes the place of the sucking-stomach, and nearly all insects have two true stomachs, called proventriculus and ventriculus.
5. n. Appetite; desire or relish for food: as, to have a good stomach for one's meals.
6. n. Hence Relish; taste; inclination; liking: as, to have no stomach for controversy.
7. n. Disposition. Spirit; temper; heart.
8. n. Compassion; pity.
9. n. Courage; spirit.
10. n. Pride; haughtiness; conceit.
11. n. Spleen; anger; choler; resentment; sullenness.
12. To encourage; hearten.
13. To hate; resent; remember or regard with anger or resentment.
14. To put up with; bear without open resentment or opposition: as, to stomach an affront.
15. To turn the stomach of; disgust.
16. To be or become angry.

Wiktionary

1. n. An organ in animals that stores food in the process of digestion.
2. n. informal The belly.
3. n. obsolete Pride, haughtiness.
4. n. obsolete Appetite.
5. n. figuratively Desire, appetite (for something abstract).
6. v. transitive To be able to tolerate (something), emotionally, physically, or mentally; to be able to stand or handle something.
7. v. obsolete, intransitive To be angry.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Anat.) An enlargement, or series of enlargements, in the anterior part of the alimentary canal, in which food is digested; any cavity in which digestion takes place in an animal; a digestive cavity. See digestion, and Gastric juice, under gastric.
2. n. The desire for food caused by hunger; appetite.
3. n. Hence appetite in general; inclination; desire.
4. n. obsolete Violence of temper; anger; sullenness; resentment; willful obstinacy; stubbornness.
5. n. obsolete Pride; haughtiness; arrogance.
6. v. To resent; to remember with anger; to dislike.
7. v. colloq. To bear without repugnance; to brook.
8. v. obsolete To be angry.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the region of the body of a vertebrate between the thorax and the pelvis
2. n. an inclination or liking for things involving conflict or difficulty or unpleasantness
3. v. put up with something or somebody unpleasant
4. n. an enlarged and muscular saclike organ of the alimentary canal; the principal organ of digestion
5. n. an appetite for food
6. v. bear to eat