offal
offal Lexical Profile
offal Game Scores & Validity
• noun
The internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal, such as the liver, kidneys, heart, and tripe, especially when prepared and eaten as food.
"Traditional Scottish haggis is a savory pudding made from sheep's offal mixed with oatmeal, suet, and spices."
The inedible or discarded parts of a slaughtered animal; more broadly, decomposing waste, rubbish, or refuse.
"Before modern sanitation laws, butcher shops often discarded animal offal directly into the city streets."
Word Nuance & Usage
Do not confuse with the homophone 'awful' (meaning very bad or unpleasant); 'offal' is a noun referring specifically to animal entrails, organ meats, or refuse.
• Rhymes for offal
Word Origin & Etymology
Originating in late Middle English from the combination of 'off' and 'fall' (likely influenced by Middle Dutch 'afval'), the word originally referred to material that falls off during processing, such as wood chips or grain husks, before specializing to mean the parts cut from a butchered animal.