gutted

1. 1
   adjective

   Left as little more than a shell, its essential parts removed, ruined, or destroyed, often by fire.

   Like a building reduced to a hollow frame, its insides scooped away.

   Firefighters spent hours inside the gutted factory searching for hot spots.

   The developers bought a gutted office block and rebuilt it from the frame up.

   Similarruined, wrecked, destroyed

   Oppositeintact

   Note

   The figurative leap runs from a carcass to a building: what fire leaves behind is a shell with its insides gone. Gutted by fire and gutted and burnt are the natural pairings, used of houses, palaces and factories. The image stretches further still. Hannah More, in 1786, applies it to names that newspapers printed with their vowels removed to avoid libel, so that Florio became Fl-r-o.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having had the internal organs removed, as a fish or animal prepared for cooking.

   A row of gutted trout hung to dry by the smokehouse.

   The butcher handed over a gutted rabbit wrapped in paper.

   Similarcleaned, dressed

   Note

   The kitchen and hunting-field word, and the root the other senses branch from: Middle English gutted, simply gut plus -ed. It belongs with fish and game, as in gutted herrings packed for export or a gutted buck dragged home by its antlers. In this literal use it takes no degrees. An animal is gutted or it is not, whereas the "crushed" feeling can be more gutted.

3. 3
   adjectiveslang

   Feeling deeply disappointed or crushed, as after a defeat, failure, or loss.

   Like the sinking feeling when a long-awaited plan collapses at the last moment.

   Fans were gutted by the last-minute defeat.

   I'm absolutely gutted that the concert got canceled.

   Similardevastated, crushed, heartbroken, shattered, disappointed

   Oppositeelated, thrilled, delighted, overjoyed

   Note

   Slang that turns the butcher's image inward: the speaker feels emptied out, like a fish on the slab. Unlike the literal sense, it is gradable. Terry Eagleton sets chuffed against gutted and finds a man more gutted than chuffed. It sits easily after feel and takes about or that: I felt gutted; the thing I was most gutted about. Filleted works the same metaphor. Keep it for conversation, not formal writing.

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of gut.

   The fire gutted three apartments overnight.

   She gutted the kitchen and started the remodel from scratch.

   Note

   A regular verb whose final t doubles before the ending: gut becomes gutted. Every meaning of the verb is transitive, so the form needs an object (the fire gutted three apartments) or a passive (the palace was gutted by fire). Each verb meaning has also hardened into an adjective: the emptied animal, the burnt-out building and the crushed spirit. As a result, the house was gutted can be read either as an action or as a state.

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