Definition of "belly"

Before I formed thee in the bellie, I knew thee; […]

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Jeremiah 1:5

There was no heat, and we shivered in the belly of the plane.

1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus, published 2010, page 454

[…] I cried by reason of mine affliction vnto the Lord, and hee heard mee; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voyce.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Jonah 2:2

At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water […]

1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883

Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.

1903 July, Jack London, “The Sounding of the Call”, in The Call of the Wild, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., page 220

The Pow'r appeaſ'd, with Winds ſuffic'd the Sail, / The bellying Canvaſs ſtrutted with the Gale; […]

1700, [John] Dryden, “Homer’s Ilias”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], book I, page 213

The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,

1890, Rudyard Kipling, The Rhyme of the Three Captains‎

There were trees whose trunks bellied into huge swellings.

1914, Theodore Roosevelt, chapter 6, in Through the Brazilian Wilderness‎

winds from sternward / Bore us onward with bellying canvas ...

1917 rev. 1925 Ezra Pound, "Canto I"

The building stood on a circular foundation, and its walls, instead of mounting skyward in a straight line, bellied outward and then curved in again at the top.

1930, Otis Adelbert Kline, The Prince of Peril, serialized in Argosy, Chapter 1

Your breath of full consent bellied his sails; […]

c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene ii]

A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom.

1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter I, in Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe