The hot food burnt

[Bassim]

Now I am wondering if my sentence sounds natural. Would someone take a look at it and correct it or improve it, if my construction is bad?

The hot food burnt his mouth and intestines, and he wanted to pause for a second or two, but the burly guards brandishing their clubs and thick cables reminded him of what would happen if he did not hurry up.

 

[Rover_KE]

By the time food reaches one's intestines, it's no longer hot enough to burn them.

 

[Bassim]

Would it be possible to add "hurt", and write like this:

The hot food burnt his mouth and hurt his intestines...

 

[MikeNewYork]

How would it hurt his intestines? The food would no longer be hot at that point. It would have had to move down the esophagus and then move into and out of the stomach. The stomach would have mixed the food with water, acid, and enzymes and mechanically churned the food.

 

[Bassim]

Now I understand that I have misunderstood the meaning of the word, intestines. I have believed that the word intestines means also stomach.

Maybe I should write: The hot food burnt his mouth and hurt his stomach.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Esophagus would be more likely. You could use burnt with that organ.

 

[Bassim]

Mike.
You see what can happen when you don't understand the full meaning of a word. Sometimes the consequences can be serious. I have seen the word "intestines" hundreds of times in different texts. and in my ignorance I believed it comprises guts as well as a stomach.

 

[emsr2d2]

As you can see from THIS picture, the intestines are reached after the stomach.

The food might have burnt his mouth and his throat, or his oesophagus, as MikeNewYork said.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Well, the point is to learn something every day. This is one for today. "Stomach" is sometimes used to refer to abdomen; the abdomen contains all the organs below the diaphragm.

 

[tedmc]

The hot food would only burn his oesophagus (BrE spelling) if he swallowed the food without chewing it, which is a voluntary action.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Not necessarily.

 

[emsr2d2]

I've burnt my throat/oesophagus plenty of times. When I've done it with solid food, maybe I didn't chew it enough, but I've done it more often with soup. No chewing required.