Those unexpected guttural rumblings that erupt suddenly and intrusively from our restless innards happen to us all. I tried to explain their origins to someone the other day and recalled that I had done that research a while back. So, I thought it might be time to revisit — or regurgitate — the subject, to enlighten a new generation.
Borborygmus (bor-ber-IG-mus) is a delightful example of a word that is onomatopoeic (on-oh-mot-oh-PEE-ik), or imitates the actual sound it is describing. Borborygmus is one of our common, sometimes comical, organic expressions from and in our digestive organs. The word comes directly from Greek, and means “rumbling of bowels,” which pretty much says it all.
In a newspaper feature of children’s questions and answers, a young reader wrote to ask what makes your stomach growl? The answer was easy and straightforward. The long tube or gut that is your internal food processor is miraculously busy grinding up and digesting the food you take in. There are bubbles of air in there produced from the breakdown of some foods, and from what we swallowed in our mouthfuls, or from carbonated beverages.
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As the solid portion of our caloric contents breaks down and becomes smaller, the “gaseous” percentage increases, and so do the sizes of the bubbles. The normal motion of bowel is to propel whatever it contains southward and outward. Bigger bubbles being squeezed and ground about make bigger, bubblier bowel sounds and audible borborygmus. Part of a normal physical exam is to listen for abdominal bowel sounds via stethoscope. The absence of bowel sounds signifies that something is quite wrong in there.
In English class, Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “the Bells” is often cited as an excellent example on onomatopoeia. An example would be the words, “The tolling of the bells, bells, bells …,” imitating the pealing or bonging of the bells. Perhaps borborygmus could achieve some respectability if we would substitute, “the rumbling of the bowels, bowels, bowels?”
Not quite the same, you say? A better choice might be to quote what a charming older patient said as her belly burbled its borborygmus while I leaned over her on the exam table. With a twinkle in her eye, she murmured, “organ concert.”
