From Middle English belchen, from Old English bielċan, from Proto-Germanic *balkijaną, *belkaną, probably ultimately of imitative origin.^[1]

Related to Dutch balken (“to bray”), Middle Low German belken (“to shout”), Low German bölken (“to shout, bark”), Old English bealċettan (“to utter, send forth”). See also English bolk, boak.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɛltʃ/

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• Rhymes: -ɛltʃ

belch (third-person singular simple present belches, present participle belching, simple past and past participle belched)

1. (transitive, intransitive, immunology) To expel (gas) from the stomach through the mouth; especially, to do so loudly.

   Synonym: burp

   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv]:

     'Tis not a year or two shows us a man:
     They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;
     To eat us hungerly, and when they are full,
     They belch us.

   • 1746, attributed to Jonathan Swift, "A Love Poem form a Physician to his Mistress," [1]

     When I an amorous kiss design'd,

     I belch'd a hurricane of wind.

   • 1980, J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, Penguin, 19982, Chapter 2, p. 41:

     She eats too fast, belches behind a cupped hand, smiles.

2. (transitive, intransitive) To eject or emit (something) with spasmodic force or noise.

   Thick smoke belched through the funnels of the steamship.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 230-33:

     Within the gates of hell sat Sin and Death,
     In counterview within the gates, that now
     Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame
     Far into Chaos […] .

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     1697, Virgil, “The Eighth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     Vulcan this plague begot; and, like his sire,
     Black clouds he belch'd, and flakes of livid fire.

   • 1793, William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion‎^[2], lines 30–33:

     […] beneath him sound like waves on a desert shore
     The voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money,
     That shiver in religious caves beneath the burning fires
     Of lust, that belch incessant from the summits of the earth.

   • 1914, Harry Kemp, I sing the Battle‎^[3]:

     I sing the song of the great clean guns that belch forth death at will.
     Ah, but the wailing mothers, the lifeless forms and still!

   • 1941, Emily Carr, chapter 18, in Klee Wyck‎^[4]:

     I grasped the cold slimy rung. My feet slithered and scrunched on stranded things. Next rung...the next and next...endless horrible rungs, hissing and smells belching from under the wharf.

   • 1996, Clifford Geertz, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 141:

     A book entitled Emerging Indonesia has on its cover photographs of a sunrise over palm trees, bent women in coolie hats transplanting rice, a wooden bull burning at a Balinese cremation, and a liquid nitrogen plant belching black smoke into a clear, undefiled tropical sky.

• (expel gas): burp

• fart
• pass gas

belch (plural belches)

a belch (noun sense 1)

1. An instance of belching; the sound that it makes.
   • 2016 March 11, Jennifer Coates, “I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.”, in Medium‎^[5]:

     The hotel coffee machine gurgles out an acrid belch.

   Synonym: burp

2. (obsolete) Malt liquor.
   • c. 1699, John Dennis, letter to Mr. Collier

     Porters would no longer be drunk with Belch

• A belch is often considered to be louder than a burp.

• blech