How to Use disembowel in a Sentence

disembowel

verb
  • The fierce cat uses its claws to disembowel its prey.
  • That is small consolation when your steers are disemboweled or your dog torn to pieces.
    — Ben Long, Outdoor Life, 6 Mar. 2020
  • On the other hand, a dog owner might watch in horror as a wolf disemboweled his pet in front of his eyes.
    — J.b. MacKinnon, Smithsonian, 23 Oct. 2017
  • Mann did omit the fact that de Portago was also disemboweled.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 22 Jan. 2024
  • Halfway under the frame lay the family’s small dog, disemboweled by the blows of the log.
    — Tribune News Service, oregonlive.com, 22 June 2019
  • Self, who was also 25, was later found by his neighbor nearly disemboweled.
    — Cameron Knight, Cincinnati Enquirer, 17 June 2026
  • One officer was killed and disemboweled; two others were badly injured.
    — Longreads, 5 Apr. 2018
  • Later, the mother tried to murder the 6-year-old child, including trying to disembowel her, the bill said.
    — Jim Saunders, Sun Sentinel, 6 Aug. 2024
  • Researchers initially thought that the giant claw was used for disemboweling its prey, but now believe it was used for stabbing and slashing them.
    — Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 8 June 2023
  • The maximum penalty for treason against the king at that time was to be hung by the neck until the edge of death, then disemboweled and torn into four pieces — while still alive.
    — William Doyle, Boston Herald, 3 Dec. 2025
  • These days, 25 Water Street is getting flayed and disemboweled.
    — Curbed, 24 Jan. 2024
  • After the guy on the X-cross is a Super Bowl Weeknd being disemboweled.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 24 Oct. 2024
  • Johnnie Ervin, who used a walker, had been stabbed 12 times and disemboweled, prosecutors said.
    — Megan Crepeau, chicagotribune.com, 20 June 2017
  • If disembowelling a federal agency does somehow lead to higher reading and math scores, the federal workers who would have tracked this progress won’t be around to tell us about it.
    — Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 21 Mar. 2025
  • But that’s a little like disemboweling a live sheep in July and interpreting its viscera to foretell that the weather will turn cold.
    — Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 6 June 2023
  • The bear eventually left, but not before nearly disemboweling him.
    — Ryan Sabalow and Ed Fletcher, sacbee, 16 Mar. 2018
  • The legend says these spiders position themselves under the belly of a camel, leap into the air, slice open the abdomen, disembowel it and eat the stomach while the camel is still alive.
    — Jeremy Hillpot, Discover Magazine, 10 June 2023
  • Nonetheless, everyone stays back from her long and powerful legs, which can deliver a lion-disemboweling kick.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 13 Mar. 2020
  • Tew died in the Red Sea in September 1695, when he was disemboweled by a cannonball.
    — Sean Kingsley, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 May 2024
  • In Jurassic Park, Alan Grant tells an annoying child that the dinosaurs used their claws to disembowel their prey with slashing motions.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 15 Dec. 2011
  • Then Morita failed to disembowel himself before he, too, was decapitated.
    — Ian Buruma, The New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2025
  • In 2007 a zookeeper in Argentina died after she was disemboweled by a captive giant anteater, and since then two hunters have met similar fates in the wild.
    — National Geographic, 7 Mar. 2018
  • The Tollund Man was almost certainly hanged, while others appear to have been disemboweled, decapitated or bled from the throat.
    — Robert Rubsam, New York Times, 24 Mar. 2020
  • Films that accompanied the curriculum also showed the Netsilik disemboweling a seal and carving up a caribou.
    — Jonathan Zimmerman, The Atlantic, 23 Dec. 2025
  • In Gorongosa, the dogs target bushbuck, impala and waterbuck, surrounding the prey, grabbing at legs, nose and hindquarters, disemboweling it from below.
    — Natalie Angier, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2019
  • With eyesight as sharp as that of an eagle or falcon, vultures can detect tiny variations in the landscape that might signal current or soon-to-be carrion, like displacements in the grass as a predator disembowels its prey.
    — Natalie Angier, New York Times, 12 Nov. 2023
  • Kathy Kraninger, Mulvaney’s successor, continued his effort to disembowel the agency.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2022
  • Also nobody gets stabbed, decapitated, disemboweled, impaled, poisoned, burned alive, blown into a million little pieces or shoved out the Moon Door.
    — Connie Ogle, miamiherald, 13 July 2017
  • Fortunately no one resembles a tasty gazelle antelope, which cheetahs — who rule as earth’s fastest mammals — race down, viciously bite in the neck to suffocate and bloodily disembowel to devour.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Nailah Pettigen was dead, appeared to have been disemboweled, had an incision from her neck to her stomach, her intestines were spilled out onto the ground and her bed was completely soaked through with blood, Gaches said.
    — Bay City News, The Mercury News, 30 July 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'disembowel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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