gut v.2
1. (US) to display one’s courage.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in Four Novels (1983) 177: All right, sister [...] you go right ahead and out-gut me. You’ll get fat trying to out-gut me. | |
| in Heller In This Corner (1974) 402: I think he was yellow [...] if you out-gutted him and showed him who was boss. |
2. (US black) to punch in the stomach; lit. and fig. use.
| Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 146: He wouldn’t throw up his hands, so K.B. gutted him and dropped him. | |
| Dirty Laundry 38: Off the record, we’ve been gutted. | |
| Silence of the Lambs (1991) 6: He gutted Will with a linoleum knife. | |
| Iced 248: The answer gutted me. Knocked the air from my lungs. Threw me on my knees. |
In phrases
(Irish) to be desperate for.
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | The Joy (2015) [ebook] I’m gutting for a smoke and I go into the first newsagents I can find to get forty blue. |
(US) to be strong, tough, display personal courage in the face of adversity.
| Sometimes a Great Notion 373: Are you scared to gut it out, Floyd? | |
| Ball Four 26: Those. were the days when I gutsed it, so I jumped right up and said I wanted to pitch. | |
| (con. 1969–70) F.N.G. (1988) 277: All we can do is gut it out and hope them lucky beads of yours keep the odds even. | |
| Rivethead (1992) 91: Al started payin’ me all this lip service about ‘someday in the future’ and ‘guttin’ it out.’. | |
| N.Y. Times 7 June C2: I had to gut out the head wind up the hill because I knew I would have a tail wind all the way into town [HDAS]. | |
 | LAbyrinth 10: Would you quit if you got cramps while you were running, or would you grind it out, cry it out, gut it out. | |
| The Force [ebook] She’s got no choice [...] and she guts it out. |
(US) to surpass a rival in courage and aggression.
| Semi-Tough 65: Shoat’s idea for the second half was for Hose Manning to throw a couple of new patterns [...] then ‘outgut’ the Redskins in the last quarter. |