Can you stomach this?

DOES your English turn the stomach of your listeners? Then you should have a strong stomach for their insults and critical comments. “Stomach” expressions are not only related to food, but they also convey your disgust or repulsion.

Something that turns your stomach makes you feel sick and nauseous. If you say you are sick to your stomach you are saying you feel like vomiting or metaphorically you mean you are so upset about something that the thought of it makes you feel sick.

I have no stomach for exotic food whenever I go to China. The sight of scorpions and the odour of smelly tofu instantly turns my stomach. I cannot stomach dishes like steamed scorpions or snake soup. Once, in Guangzhou, the sight of sea cockroaches and monitor lizards preserved in wine made me sick to my stomach. No wonder people say the Chinese eat everything under the sun.

If you have butterflies in your stomach, you are very nervous about doing something.

There are butterflies in my stomach every time I go up on stage to sing. Another word for stomach is belly. A belly laugh is a hearty, loud laugh. Having a belly laugh every now and then is good for health.

Belly is also used to describe a curved or rounded part of something.

The belly of the plane was found resting on some trees after it had crashed.

To bellyache is to complain a lot, especially about unimportant things.

She likes to bellyache about her bed or her mattress, so everyone shuns her.

If you say you have had a bellyful of something, you mean you are annoyed by something because you have heard or experienced too much of it.

I have had a bellyful of her whining and complaining about the tour.

Someone who is called a yellow belly is a coward.

He is aggressive and quarrelsome, but he is actually a yellow belly.

If your business goes belly up, it means it has failed or gone bankrupt.

Ali’s supermarket joint venture went belly up within a year.

You are accused of having eyes bigger than your stomach if you take more than what you can eat. This is a common practice when people go for buffet meals, as they think that they must get their money’s worth.

Some of the guests are very welldressed, but the way they grab and pile their plates voraciously obviously shows that they have eyes bigger than their stomach.