visceral
adjective
Christopher MaagRania Aniftos
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The Tie Between Visceral and Biology
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.
Examples of visceral in a Sentence
Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated, 6 Nov. 2006
When you measure your waist circumference, you're indirectly measuring your visceral fat.
—David Schardt, Nutrition Action, July/August 2006
But there are strong taboos I haven't anticipated. The most striking is the visceral dislike of rawness. In China, the consumption of raw foods was historically viewed as a barbarian habit, and most everything is still eaten cooked.
—Fuchsia Dunlop, Gourmet, August 2005
One of the wonders of cooking is that the tiniest adjustment to what you are making, the addition of a single ingredient or the execution of a technique, can entirely change a dish and the visceral response you get from eating it.
—Amanda Hesser, New York Times, 17 July 2002
Her visceral reaction was to curse at the other driver.
Christian Blauvelt, IndieWire, 24 Oct. 2025
Auerbach's book is genuinely horrifying, resurrecting that visceral terror of 'stranger-danger' most of us learned as kids.
—Brian Truitt, USA Today, 22 Oct. 2025
Frankenstein Created Women is a notably visceral and haunted chapter in the canon, urgently and creatively exploring Frankenstein’s lack of control over his creation.
—Rory Doherty, Vulture, 20 Oct. 2025
The visceral feeling of it is what puts gamers in the shoes of the main character, clicking a button and appearing in a different region can break the immersion.
—Ryan Gaur, Rolling Stone, 14 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for visceral
Cite this Entry
“Visceral.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/visceral. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
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visceral
adjective
Medical Definition
visceral
adjective
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