tummy
noun/ˈtʌ.mi/
Etymology Imitating a child's attempt to say stomach, via archaic colloquialism stummy. Compare twee and pasghetti for similar phonetic reductions.
1
Childish, Colloquial, Often The stomach or belly.
- "So I broke away early this mornin', gave my guard a kick in the tummy that laid him out, and sprinted for the camp."1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
- ALAN [to DISART]: It was terrible. We had to walk home. Four miles. I got the shakes. / DYSART: You were scared too? / ALAN [to DYSART]: It was like a hole had been drilled in my tummy. A hole—right there. And the air was getting in!1973, Peter Shaffer, “Act II, Scene 30”, in Equus, page 94:
2 more examples
- I got love in my tummy and a tiny little pain / And a ten ton catastrophe on a 60 pound chain2013, “Jubilee Street”, in Warren Ellis, Nick Cave (lyrics), Push the Sky Away, performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:
- Oh man —pal! You didn't swallow that gum, did you?? It stays in your tummy for seven years and all the other bad stuff sticks to it and then a doctor has to cut it out with an axe!2019 December 16, Chesca & J Hause, “The Lies”, in Litter Box Comics:
2
US, Childish, Colloquial, Often, Slang A protruding belly, paunch.
3
Childish, Colloquial, Euphemistic, Often In reference to where a baby is carried, the abdomen, or specifically the womb, especially of a woman, but also of animals in general (usually mammals).
- Derived terms
- gyppy tummy, jiffy tummy, tum, tummied, tummyache, tummy button, tummy time, tummy tuck