Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US campus) easy.

1902		implied in gut n. (3a)
1992		D. Pinckney High Cotton (1993) 149: That most notorious of ‘gut classes,’ the History of Television.
1997		J.R. Saunders Tightrope Walk 84: The paper hurled epithets such as ‘intellectual farce’ and ‘most outrageous gut course on campus.’.
2002		P. Mackintosh Sneaking Out 81: The ‘C’ In ‘Human Sexuality,’ purported to be a gut course.

2. (orig. US) based on instinct, feeling.

1951–52		Kerouac Visions of Cody (1973) 42: The powerful gut feeling I had.
1960		G. Swarthout Where the Boys Are 169: Don’t they teach you how to get gut-mad?
1971		B. Moyers Listening to America 92: Wallace appealed to people because he spoke of gut issues.
1994		C. Dexter Daughters of Cain (1995) 6: I’ve got this gut-feeling that Phillotson wouldn’t have got very far with it anyway.
2012		S. Blass Pirate for Life 140: Danny had kind of a gut feel about managing and seldom went with the percentages.
2018		W. Kramer Hard Stuff 80: John had the ability to articulate feelings that I only knew on a gut level.
2024		J. Haidt Anxious Generation 211: [W]e have an immediate gut feeling about an event, and then we make up a story after the fact to justify our rapid judgment.

3. of fundamental importance.

1964		Economist 17 Oct. 261/3: For Harold Wilson it was a carefully planned campaign: ... the neo-Kennedyism combined with a concentration on gut issues .
1974		H.L. Foster Playin’ the Dozens 256: We have not solved the problem of discipline in inner city schools because we have not been willing to come to grips and discuss openly some gut issues.