Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the stomach, the solar plexus.

1668		Pepys Diary 17 June n.p.: I find my wife hath something in her gizzard that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up.
1679		H.B. Vindication of Sir Thomas Player 1/2: ’Tis the Matter, not the Manner that sticks in our Unworthy Respondents Gizzard .
1680		M. Stevenson Wits Paraphras’d 52: To let thee go, by what the Wizard / Inform’d me, went against my gizard.
1706		Farquhar Recruiting Officer V vi: How those bullets whistle! Suppose they had ben lodged in my gizzard now!
1722		A. Ramsay ‘The Two Lizards’ Fables and Tales 26: What makes this grumbling in thy Gizzard?
1738		Swift Polite Conversation I 93: Don’t let that stick in your Gizzard.
1803–05		‘Little Boney A-Cockhorse’ in Holloway & Black II (1979) 188: A dose of their pills they will clap in his gizzard.
1830		Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 241: It has always stuck in his gizzard [...] to think as how he had been werry cruelly used by the Fortune Tellers when he was quite a mere boy.
1851		‘Ethan Spike’s Visit to Portland’ in T.A. Burke Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 116: I sprung at ’em like a wild cat, hollerin’ out that I’d shake their tarnal gizzards out.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 42: Some of them whistling bullets or singing bombs will take my old gizzard, kerchunk.
1883		Atlanta Constitution 6 Jan. 2/3: A young gentleman was overheard to say to a young lady who had gotten on his right side, ‘Git over next my gizzard’.
1905		F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 84: ‘I’m hep to a few things about you meself that’d about get you hung in any country in the world if I wanted to cough up me gizzard to the judge’.
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 6 Oct. 4/8: But with gizzards a-gripe / We sighted in type / ‘Six Second-hand Horses for Sale!’.
1914		C.J. Dennis ‘The Play’ Bulletin (Sydney) 16 July 47/1: Quite natchril, Romeo gits wet as ’ell. / ‘It’s me or you!’ ’e ’owls, an’ wiv a yell, / Plunks Tyball through the gizzard wiv ’is sword.
1922		Wodehouse Clicking of Cuthbert 124: If there’s one thing that gives me a pain squarely in the centre of the gizzard [...] it’s a golf-lawyer.
1932		(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 77: There’ll be a lot of niggers strung up on lamp-posts with their gizzards cut out.
1944		J. Cary Horse’s Mouth (1948) 146: I only said what a nice birthday present it would be if someone would stick me in the gizzard with a pig knife.
1955		D. Niland Shiralee 17: He either dies quick with a knife in his gizzard or he lives to be a hundred.
1960		E. De Roo Big Rumble 84: I’m gonna cut out your gizzard.
1974		D. Ireland Burn 67: Shut up in there, ’less you want some spilt gizzards.
1991		B. Hamper Rivethead (1992) 1: Picklin’ his gizzard at any one of a thousand beer joints.
2003		R.A. Erickson Fluke Family Hero 102: He crinkled his eyes closed and waited for twenty knife blades to cut his gizzard out.

2. the heart.

1838		T. Haliburton Clockmaker II 14: I’m not a man that can’t keep nothin’ in my gizzard, but go right off and blart out all I hear.
1843		Gleaner (Manchester, NH) 23 Dec. n.p.: The sixteenth commandment is, ‘fret not thy gizzard’.
1892		H. Lawson ‘Visit of Condolence’ in Roderick (1972) 35: She’s a bit rough, but she’s got a soft gizzard.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Uplifter’ Ade’s Fables 109: The brutal Stage Manager wanted to cut the Gizzard out of the Book and omit most of the sentimental Arias.
1924		G.H. Lawson Dict. of Aus. Words And Terms 🌐 GIZZARD—The heart.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 52: Everyone else prayin’ their gizzards out – and you just layin’ around like a stunned mullet!
1982		R. Dahl Revolting Rhymes n.p.: There’s something nasty up our tree! / I saw him, mum! My gizzard froze!

3. (US) courage, guts.

1886		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 10 July 14/1: There is nothing like a man with plenty of gizzard.
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 315: gizzard, n. The seat of one’s courage.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 32: You can do it too, if you got the gizzard.
1938		D. Runyon ‘Dancing Dan’s Christmas’ Runyon on Broadway (1954) 257: He has about as much gizzard as anybody around.

4. the throat or mouth.

1928		J. Agate Gemel in London 18: The fellow we didn’t know shouts: ‘Shut your gizzard!’ Then the row starts.
1953		T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 161: From the way the big bastard was performing in the rec-room, you’d have thought that he’d lost his gizzard.
1960		Wodehouse Jeeves in the Offing 10: Bertram was slated to get it in the gizzard.
1975		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell and the Three-card Trick (1977) 170: As sure as Laurel loves Hardy somebody’s gonna creep up behind an’ slit me fakkin gizzard!