to crawl on one's belly: soldiers bellying through a rice paddy.
Verb phrase
15.
belly up, Informal.
a.
to approach closely, especially until one is in physical contact: to belly up to a bar.
b.
to curry favor from: Would you have gotten the promotion if you hadn't bellied up to the boss?
Idiom
16.
go/turn belly up, Informal. to come to an end; die; fail: After years of barely surviving on donations, the neighborhood social club finally went belly up.
Origin: before 950; Middle English bely,Old English belig, belg bag, skin; cognate with German Balg,Gothic balgs,Old Norse belgr sack; akin to Welsh bol(a), boly,Irish bolg sack, belly, bellows, Serbo-Croatian blàzina,Latvian pabàlsts,Avestan barəziš-,Persian bālish cushion
in. to fail. belly up.) : I sort of felt that the whole thing would go belly up, and I was right. (See also , The computer—on its last legs anyway—turned belly up right in the middle of an important job.
in. to die. (As a fish does when it dies.) : Every fish in Greg's tank went belly up last night.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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