Word of the Day

: December 17, 2023

visceral

adjective VISS-uh-rul

What It Means

Visceral is an adjective that describes something as coming from or triggering an instinctive emotional (as opposed to intellectual) response. In medical contexts it means “of or related to internal organs of the body.”

// Although she is best known for her film and television roles, Sabrina much prefers the visceral excitement of acting on stage in front of an audience.

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visceral in Context

“The truest, most visceral comedy to me is always going to be Warner Bros. cartoons that were made in the 1940s and ’50s. That’s the stuff I grew up on that was shown in reruns. So I liked that kind of comedy. I was never as comfortable with comedy where I needed to make a point about something…” — Conan O’Brien, quoted in New York Magazine, 11 Sept. 2023

Did You Know?

Apologies in advance for the offal puns, but we have a gut feeling it’s going to be hard to resist serving them up for this particular word. After all, the English language is home to a bellyful of words that refer literally to body parts and figuratively to emotions associated with them. If something has ever tickled your funny bone or touched your heart, we trust you’ve got our back on this. The adjective visceral is another prime example. Something described as visceral has to do with the viscera—that is, the internal organs of the body (especially the heart, liver, or intestines). Yet even in the early years of its use, visceral often described emotional feeling, as the physical viscera were considered the seats of human passion, sentiment, et al. Though we no longer ascribe anger to, say, the spleen, we still use visceral to describe things that are felt deeply, as if in our physical bodies. In medical contexts the word still describes things related to our actual viscera.