offal
noun
- internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal
- waste material or byproducts from a manufacturing process
- refuse; rubbish
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈɒfəl/ / /ˈɔfəl/ / /ˈɑfəl/
noun
Etymology: From Middle English offal, offall, offalle (“offal, refuse, scrap waste”), equivalent to off- + fall. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Oufal (“offal”), West Frisian ôffal (“offal”), Dutch afval (“waste, refuse”), German Low German Offall (“offal”), German Abfall (“waste, refuse”), Danish affald (“waste, refuse”), Swedish avfall (“waste, refuse”), Old English offeallan (“to cut off”).
- The internal organs of an animal (entrails or innards), used as food.
- A by-product of the grain milling process, which may include bran, husks, etc.
“1817, John Taylor, Arator; Being a Series of Agricultural Essays Practical and Political in Sixty-One Numbers, Baltimore: John M. Carter, No. 32, Indian Corn, p. 96, https://books.google.ca/books?id=paMBAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false The whole of the corn offal is better food than wheat straw, but its blades and tops are so greatly superiour, that cattle prefer them to hay, and will fatten on them as well.”
“Our standard wheat flour contains only the endosperm and represents practically a 75 per cent. extraction. The remaining 25 per cent. is known in the trade as grain offal or mill-feed, and is used largely as a concentrated food for live stock, being prized in the feeding of dairy cattle.”
- A dead body; carrion.
- That which is thrown away as worthless or unfit for use; refuse; rubbish.