stomach

Before it named the organ that complains after bad takeaway, this word pointed to a doorway: Greek stóma meant “mouth” or simply an opening. Greek physicians then applied stomákhos to the throat and gullet, eventually extending it to the pouch below; Latin stomachus carried both the anatomical sense and the idea of appetite, taste, courage, and even temper. Medieval English already had a native word, maw, from Old English maga, but the French-and-Latin import stomach gradually displaced it in educated and medical usage. In the Middle Ages, the stomach was imagined as a headquarters for emotion and desire, which helps explain why English can still speak of having “the stomach” for something or losing one’s appetite. The spelling looks grandly Latin, but the pronunciation kept its older path, leaving us with the slightly comic mismatch of stomach and “stummick.”