A rumbling or gurgling in the intestines, especially as audible stomach "growling" produced by moving gas and fluid. Stomach growl is domestic and comic. Borborygmus names the same sound with clinical clarity and, oddly, with a kind of music.

From Greek borborygmos, an imitative word shaped to the sound it denotes. Rolling consonants and liquid vowels that mimic the body's own acoustics. English keeps the learned spelling, but the ear recognizes the origin immediately.