Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A modified muscular pouch behind the stomach in the digestive tract of birds, having a thick lining and often containing ingested grit that aids in the breakdown of seeds before digestion.
  • noun A similar digestive organ found in certain invertebrates, such as the earthworm.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The second stomach of a bird, not counting the crop or craw as the first; the bulbous or muscular stomach (ventriculus bulbosus), succeeding the proventriculus and succeeded by the duodenum; the gigerium.
  • noun The proventriculus or first true stomach of insects, generally armed inside with horny teeth. See cut under Blattidæ.—
  • noun The stomach of some mollusks, as Bullidæ, when muscular and hardened.—
  • noun Figuratively, temper: now only in the phrase to fret one's gizzard.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) The second, or true, muscular stomach of birds, in which the food is crushed and ground, after being softened in the glandular stomach (crop), or lower part of the esophagus; the gigerium.
  • noun A thick muscular stomach found in many invertebrate animals.
  • noun A stomach armed with chitinous or shelly plates or teeth, as in certain insects and mollusks.
  • noun (Zoöl.) an American herring (Dorosoma cepedianum) resembling the shad, but of little value.
  • noun [Low] to harass; to vex one's self; to worry.
  • noun [Low] to be difficult of digestion; to be offensive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A portion of the esophagus of either a bird or an annelid that contains ingested grit and is used to grind up ingested food before it is transferred to the stomach.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun thick-walled muscular pouch below the crop in many birds and reptiles for grinding food

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration of Middle English giser, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *gicērium, from Latin gigēria, cooked entrails of poultry, probably of Iranian origin; akin to Persian jigar, liver; see yĕ̄kwr̥ in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French gesier, giser et al. (French gésier), from Latin.

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Examples

  • The CEO of Redfin, the large venture-backed real estate company, describes what he calls "gizzard squeezers" who work for investment banks and are supposed to tell you when it's a good time to raise money.

    NPR Topics: News 2011

  • The CEO of Redfin, the large venture-backed real estate company, describes what he calls "gizzard squeezers" who work for investment banks and are supposed to tell you when it's a good time to raise money.

    NPR Topics: News 2011

  • The CEO of Redfin, the large venture-backed real estate company, describes what he calls "gizzard squeezers" who work for investment banks and are supposed to tell you when it's a good time to raise money.

    NPR Topics: News 2011

  • You may often see the Turkeys, Pheasants, Peacocks, and other birds of this Hen-family, scratching up the gravel; and you know, I daresay, that grain-eating birds have a little mill inside them called a gizzard, which grinds their food for them.

    Twilight and Dawn Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation Caroline Pridham

  • It is in the region of the umbilicus, _u_, and the extreme caudal end of the stomach which has been called the gizzard, _gz_.

    Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator C. M. [Illustrator] Reese

  • One part of my stomach is called a gizzard and its duty is to grind and crush my food so that it may be digested.

    Burgess Bird Book for Children 1919

  • The stomach which receives it, and which is called the gizzard, is quite a different sort of thing from a useless membrane, thin and delicate like ours.

    The History of a Mouthful of Bread And its effect on the organization of men and animals Jean Mac�� 1854

  • Birds, whom nature has deprived of teeth, have a strong muscular stomach, called the gizzard, which serves the purposes of teeth, and they even take into the stomach small pieces of grit, to assist in grinding to a powder the grain that they have swallowed.

    Popular Lectures on Zoonomia Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease Thomas Garnett 1784

  • Digestion begins when food passes down an elastic, tube-like structure called the gizzard (a sack filled with sand and small rocks that with muscular contractions grinds the food with the digestive juices).

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] Ashcraft 2010

  • Digestion begins when food passes down an elastic, tube-like structure called the gizzard (a sack filled with sand and small rocks that with muscular contractions grinds the food with the digestive juices).

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] Ashcraft 2010

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  • earlier gysard, alteration of gysar, from Middle English giser, gyser, from Old North French guisier liver (especially of a fowl), gizzard, modification of Latin gigeria (neuter plural) cooked entrails of poultry, perhaps of Iranian origin; akin to Persian jigar liver

    August 30, 2009