Stomach

Appetite: “He who hath no stomach for this fight.” (Shakespeare: Henry V., iv. 3.)

Appetite for honours, etc., or ambition: “Wolsey was a man of an unbounded stomach.” (Henry VIII., iv. 2.)

Appetite or inclination: “Let me praise you while I have the stomach.” (Merchant of Venice, iii. 5.)

Stomach. To swallow, to accept with appetite, to digest.

To stomach an insult. To swallow it and not resent it.

“If you must believe, stomach not all.”—Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 4.

Stomach, meaning “wrath,” and the verb “to be angry,” is the Latin stomʹachus, stomachaʹri.

“Peliʹdæ stomachum cedere nescii.” Horace. (“The stomach [wrath] of relentless Achilles.”)

“Stomachabatur si quid asperius dixerim.”—Cicero. (“His stomach rose if I spoke sharper than usual.”)

The fourth stomach of ruminating animals is called the abomaʹsus or abomaʹsum (from ab-omaʹsum).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.