Meaning & Analysis
To eat something that is physically nauseating or difficult to digest, causing a feeling of revulsion or sickness.
Insights
Moral Revulsion
The proverb signifies a strong moral or ethical opposition to an idea, action, or situation. It describes something that is so contrary to one's principles that it causes a feeling of deep-seated, visceral disgust.
Forced Compliance
It represents being forced to do something against one's will or personal preference. The action is unpalatable and must be endured despite being deeply unpleasant, much like swallowing disagreeable food.
Emotional Aversion
The phrase can also describe a profound personal or emotional aversion to a person or circumstance. It conveys an instinctual, gut-level rejection that is difficult to overcome.
Somatic Metaphor
This proverb is a classic somatic metaphor, grounding abstract concepts of moral or emotional aversion in the physical experience of nausea. This reflects a historical worldview where emotions were believed to be seated in specific bodily organs, linking the stomach's function of accepting or rejecting food to the conscience's role in accepting or rejecting actions and ideas.
Psychological Dissonance
The phrase powerfully illustrates the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance, where an individual's actions conflict with their internal values. The visceral, gut-level language gives a tangible and universally understood expression to the discomfort of acting against one's principles.
Historical Application
Early usage, as seen in the quotations from the 16th and 17th centuries, demonstrates its application to social and political commentary. It was used to express profound personal disagreement with prevailing customs or events, framing moral objections as a form of physical revulsion.
Rhetorical Devices
Somatic Metaphor
The central device is the metaphor equating the stomach's physical digestion with the conscience's moral or emotional processing, making an abstract feeling concrete and relatable.
Idiom
The proverb functions as a powerful idiom, where the collective meaning transcends the literal definitions of the individual words.
Visceral Imagery
It evokes strong and universally understood sensory imagery of nausea and physical rejection to articulate a powerful emotional or moral state.
Transcription
Quotations
Nothing in Fraunce . . went more against my stomacke, then to see the Secretaries of noble men in so litle credite and reputation.
It went against my stomacke once or twice.
Give the fresh Salmon line now .. hee shall serve for my breakefast, tho he go against my stomacke.
These matters, I assure you, it goes against my stomacke to relate.
[These things] go absolutely against the stomachs of good men.
That goes much against my stomack.
Cross References
- See St., nos. 321, 903.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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