swallow up

present singular third person swallows up · participle present swallowing up · participle past swallowed up · past swallowed up

1. To completely enclose or envelop.

   Actually the job was almost the despair of those early pioneers, for the surface was a "quaking morass," the surrounding district was undrained, and no sooner than soil was deposited than it was swallowed up, with no apparent effect, for the sponginess of the land remained unaltered.

   1934 February, G. W. Tripp, “How Nature Harasses the Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 79

2. To take over or absorb something (especially an organisation) so it no longer has a separate identity; to assimilate.

   Yes, there were hundreds of companies in existence, but a form of natural selection was taking place. Weaker companies were swallowed up by larger ones.

   2024 July 24, Richard Foster, “Rail reform has never been easy”, in RAIL, number 1014, page 28

   1 more example

   (Thus Engels expected Austria-Hungary to swallow up the small Balkan countries; Poland, as a historical nation, should, he thought, be restored and include in its dominion the less developed peoples to the east-Lithuanians, White Russians, and Ukrainians.)

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: powstanie (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 349

3. To voraciously consume resources, such as money; to devour.