gutted

Gutted is disappointment with the insides scooped out. The image comes from the ordinary verb: to gut a fish is to hollow it, and crushing bad news leaves you feeling hollowed the same way. It is stronger than "disappointed" and more physical, which is why British sports coverage leans on it so hard.

Football gave the word its natural home. Players are gutted after relegation, fans are gutted after a last-minute equaliser, and "absolutely gutted" is close to a post-match ritual. But the word works anywhere a hope collapses: a failed exam, a cancelled trip, a job that went to someone else.

Americans have started borrowing it. The crossover began around the mid-2010s and the word now turns up in US writing, though it still carries a British accent. Gamers also use the literal verb figuratively: a patch that guts a weapon has stripped out what made it good.

The exact first use is unclear. The metaphor is transparent: from "gut," to hollow out, with Green's Dictionary of Slang deriving it from the older phrase "sick to one's guts."

What is documented gives it a rougher birthplace than its current sports-page home. Green's labels the sense as originating in prison slang, with citations from the 1960s and 70s, before it spread into widespread British use from the mid-1970s. By the 1980s it was ordinary informal British English.

Its American adoption is recent enough to have been tracked. A linguist who studies British and American crossings flagged gutted as a UK-to-US arrival in 2016. It has been settling into American informal use through the 2020s.