bowels

The deepest or innermost part.

down in the bowels of the Earth

O momentary grace of mortal men, / Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! / Who builds his hopes in air of your good looks, / Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, / Ready, with every nod, to tumble down / Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

Here we cannot suppress a pious Wish, that all Quarrels were to be decided by those Weapons only, with which Nature, knowing what is proper for us, hath supplied us; and that cold Iron was to be used in digging no Bowels, but those of the Earth.

At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea.

The concept or quality that defines something at its very core.

the project’s bowels

The intestines.

Compassion, sympathy.

Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, / In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove, / That, if requiring fail, he will compel; / And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord, / Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy / On the poor souls for whom this hungry war / Opens his vasty jaws

If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

Have you no Bovvels, no Tenderneſs, my dear Lucy, to ſee a Huſband in theſe Circumſtances?

I screamed, and fell on my knees as they laid hands on me; but Mrs. D---- was a woman without bowels, and the men were complaisant and not unwilling to see the cruel sport of the usher flogged, and the schoolmaster disciplined; and it would have gone hard with me, in spite of my prayers, if the constable had not arrived at that moment, and requested with dignity to see his prisoner.

obsoleteThe body as the source of offspring.

And David said to Abishai, and to all his servants, Behold, my son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life: how much more now may this Benjamite do it?

1751, Thomas Skinner, “A Sermon preach’d at the Ma’nor of Peace, in the County of Hampshire, on May the 9th, 1751” in Alfred Baylies Page, Reverend Grindall Rawson and his Ministry, 1907, p. 9, Had you been their natural Parents, and they the Children of your own Bowels, Methinks, you could not have Contributed much more Bountifully to their Assistance […]

What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm?

Also a form of bowelplural of bowel