innards
The guts and insides of a person, animal, or sometimes a machine.
Also called guts, insides, entrails.
Updated September 24, 2026
innards pronunciation
/IN-erdz/
Meaning
Innards are the organs you pull out when you dress a deer or butcher a hog: stomach, guts, the works. Country folks also say it for a bellyache (that chili tore up my innards) or, less often, the insides of an engine. Soft word for messy work. Nobody around the smokehouse is saying viscera.
How folks use it
- “Save the hog innards for the dogs and the sausage.”
- “That bad water messed with my innards all night.”
Origin and etymology
Dialect twist on inwards, meaning the bowels or insides. Print shows innerds by about 1825. Farm and hunting talk kept it alive across rural America, and it sits natural in Southern and Appalachian speech.