[as if ad. L. *ēviscerātiōn-em, n. of action f. ēviscerāre: see EVISCERATE. Cf. F. évisceration.]
1. The action or process of eviscerating or taking out the viscera; disembowelling.
1692. J. Edwards, Remarkable Texts, 161. This Evisceration is very remarkable, for ’tis emphatically said, his Bowels, yea all his Bowels gushed out.
1845. Syd. Smith, Irish Rom. Cath. Ch., Wks. 1859, II. 234/2. The O’Sullivans have a still earlier plea of suspension, evisceration, and division.
transf. 1886. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 3 Sept., 2/2. Another attributes it [earthquake] to volcanic evisceration.
2. fig. (cf. EVISCERATE 2.) † a. Manifestation of one’s inmost thoughts; unbosoming. b. The extracting or eliciting of the inner meaning (of anything). c. The depriving (an enactment or statement) of all that gives it value.
1628. Donne, Serm. (1640), xxiii. 230. Gods laying himself open, his manifestation, his revelation, his evisceration, and embowelling of himselfe to us, there [in heaven].
1831. Coleridge, Table-t., 27 Oct. If a certain latitude in examining witnesses is … a necessary mean towards the evisceration of the truth of matters of fact.
1874. H. R. Reynolds, John Bapt., viii. 498. The practical evisceration or modification of the Mosaic legislation by carnal or ceremonial additions.
1880. Stanley, Ess., Subscription (1884), 179. A form of subscription which, after the evisceration of the old form, contains nothing of a safeguard and something of an offence.
1880. E. White, Cert. Relig., 54. The enormous labour of evisceration expended upon their writings by the Unitarian commentators.
