gutting

Pluralguttings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of gut.

   The crew was gutting the trawler's catch as the storm rolled in.

   Gutting the herring before salting kept them edible through the winter.

   Note

   The -ing form carries all three transitive uses of the verb: gutting a fish, gutting a building or an institution of its essential parts, and gutting a person's spirits. Each takes a direct object, as in "the crew was gutting the catch." When the same spelling stands without an object and can be graded, it has become the adjective for crushing news.

2. 2
   adjective

   Deeply disheartening; causing a crushing sense of disappointment or defeat.

   The team's last-minute collapse was absolutely gutting for the supporters.

   She found the rejection letter gutting after pouring a year into the application.

   Similardevastating, crushing, heartbreaking, disheartening, demoralizing

   Oppositeheartening, encouraging, uplifting

   Note

   It behaves as a true adjective rather than a participle in disguise. It grades, so a loss can be more gutting than the last or the most gutting of the season, and it pairs naturally with intensifiers such as absolutely. It grew from the verb's figurative use, to dishearten, which is still carried by the participle.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The act of emotionally devastating or crushing a person.

   The team endured a thorough gutting at the hands of the defending champions.

   His public gutting in front of colleagues dented his confidence for weeks.

   Similarhumiliation, thrashing, drubbing, mauling

   Note

   Behind the figurative thrashing lies a brutal literal act. Its near-synonyms are evisceration and disembowelment, the removal of a body's insides. When a heavy defeat or a public dressing-down is called a gutting, the word borrows that violence. This is why it sounds harsher than a beating, and why it suits losses that leave someone emptied out.

4. 4
   noununcountableplural

   The leftover internal parts removed when a fish is cleaned and prepared.

   The fishmonger swept the gutting into a drain after filleting the catch.

   Piles of gutting from the morning's haul drew flies along the wharf.

   Similarguts

   Note

   Fish waste is usually counted in the plural: mackerel guttings, herring guttings. The noun names the offal itself, close in meaning to the plain word guts, and the kind of fish typically comes first as a modifier. In the singular, gutting more readily reads as the act of cleaning a fish than as what is left over.

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