swell

present singular third person swells · participle present swelling · past swelled · dialectal past swole · dialectal past swoll · participle past swollen · participle past swelled

1. intransitiveTo become larger, fuller, or rounder, or expand in size or shape, usually as a result of pressure from within.

   My ankles had swelled in the heat.

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   O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

   1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act PROLOGUE, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]

   “If you drinks a drop more, Miss Lucy, you’ll just go like my pore young sister goed, […] Pop she did not. She swole … swole and swole.” “You mean ‘swelled,’ Cookoo,” corrected Lucille […] “[…] I say she swole—and what is more she swole clean into a dropsy.”

   1914, P. C. Wren, chapter 5, in Snake and Sword, London: Longmans, Green, page 78

   She had overheard her Mom and Mrs. Thomas from across the street talking about someone who was allergic to stings, and Mrs. Thomas had said, "Ten seconds after it gut im, poor ole Frank was swole up like a balloon. If he hadn't had his little kit with the hyperdermic^([sic]), I guess he woulda choked to death."

   1999 April 6, Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, May 2017, →ISBN, pages 67–68

   Synonyms: balloon

2. transitiveTo cause to become bigger.

   Rains and dissolving snow swell the rivers in spring.

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   Mildly it [the wind] kist our sailes, and, fresh, and sweet, As, to a stomack sterv’d, whose insides meete, Meate comes, it came; and swole our sailes, when wee So joyd, as Sara’ her swelling joy’d to see.

   1633, John Donne, “The Storme”, in Poems, London: John Marriot, page 57

   ’Tis low ebb sure with his Accuser, when such Peccadillos as these are put in to swell the Charge.

   1687, Francis Atterbury, An Answer to Some Considerations on the Spirit of Martin Luther and the Original of the Reformation, Oxford, page 12

   For this scene, a large number of supers are engaged, and in order to further swell the crowd, practically all the available stage hands have to ‘walk on’ dressed in various coloured dominoes, and all wearing masks.

   1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020

   After a harsh police crackdown last week fueled anger and swelled protests, President Dilma Rousseff, a former guerrilla who was imprisoned under the dictatorship and has now become the target of pointed criticism herself, tried to appease dissenters by embracing their cause on Tuesday.

   2013 June 18, Simon Romero, “Protests Widen as Brazilians Chide Leaders”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 Jun 2013

   Synonyms: distend

3. intransitiveTo grow gradually in force or loudness.

   The organ music swelled.

4. transitiveTo cause to grow gradually in force or loudness.

   It commenced with a slow crescendo, so irresistibly lugubrious that two of our dogs at once raised their heads and swelled their voices into a responsive tremolo, which may have been heard and appreciated by their distant relatives.

   1880, Felix Leopold Oswald, Summerland Sketches, page 57

5. transitiveTo raise to arrogance; to puff up; to inflate.

   to be swelled with pride or haughtiness

6. intransitiveTo be raised to arrogance.

   Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.

   1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]

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   […] you swell at the sight of tartan, as the bull is said to do at scarlet.

   1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], chapter IX, in Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 111

7. To be elated; to rise arrogantly.

   In all things else above our humble fate Your equal mind yet swells not into state, But like some mountain in those happy Isles Where in perpetual Spring young Nature smiles, Your greatnesse shows:

   1662, John Dryden, To My Lord Chancellor Presented on New-Years-Day, London: Henry Herringman, page 5

8. To be turgid, bombastic, or extravagant.

   swelling words  a swelling style

9. To protuberate; to bulge out.

   A cask swells in the middle.

plural swells

1. countableuncountableThe act of swelling; increase in size.
2. countableuncountableA bulge or protuberance.
3. countableuncountableIncrease of power in style, or of rhetorical force.

   Concentrated are his arguments, select and distinct and orderly his topics, ready and unfastidious his expressions, popular his allusions, plain his illustrations, easy the swell and subsidence of his periods […]

   1826, Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, 2nd edition, London: Henry Colburn, Volume I, Conversation 6, p. 128

4. countableuncountableA long series of ocean waves, generally produced by wind, and lasting after the wind has ceased.

   the heave of a heavy ocean swell

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   There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea.

   1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 24, in Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC

   Now they were faced with the problem of a northerly blow, which could soon send a heavy swell clean into the bay.

   1956 September, F. F. Nicholls, “Neyland, A Forgotten Harbour”, in Railway Magazine, page 632

   The Tilbury-Gravesend foot passenger ferry fights its way through a high swell on the river Thames on February 16 2022.

   2023 February 8, Barry Doe, “Birmingham & West Midlands Atlas is a fine production”, in RAIL, number 976, page 63, photo caption

5. countableuncountableentertainmentA gradual crescendo followed by diminuendo.

   He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

6. countableuncountableentertainmentA device for controlling the volume of a pipe organ.
7. countableuncountableentertainmentA division in a pipe organ, usually the largest enclosed division.
8. countableuncountableA hillock or similar raised area of terrain.

   Off on the crest of a swell a moving figure was seen now and then. "Antelope," said the hunters.

   1909, Joseph A. Altsheler, chapter 2, in The Last of the Chiefs

9. countableuncountablegeographyAn upward protrusion of strata from whose central region the beds dip quaquaversally at a low angle.
10. countabledatedinformaluncountableA person who is stylish, fancy, or elegant.

    He was dressed in a flashy style, not unlike what is popularly denominated a swell.

    1887, Horatio Alger, chapter 9, in The Cash Boy

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    It costs him no more to wear all his ornaments about his distinguished person than to leave them at home. If you can be a swell at a cheap rate, why not?

    c. 1850, William Makepeace Thackeray, “The Kickleburys on the Rhine”, in The Christmas Books of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh

    Between the two extremes of college men the unsocial dig and the flunking swell, lies the majority, who, acknowledging the duty and merit of hard work, see the value in social and recreative line, but are at somewhat of a loss, seemingly, how to proportionize the time given to the different sides of college life, or how far to allow themselves to go on the more attractive side.

    1892, Occident - Volume 22, page 36

    Synonyms: dandy, dude, toff, barbermonger, beau, blade, blood, buck

11. countableinformaluncountableA person of high social standing; an important person.

    The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy.

    1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC, page 176

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    "I am not in Mr Crosbie's confidence. He is in the General Committee Office, I know; and, I believe, has pretty nearly the management of the whole of it." "I'll tell you what he is, Bell; Mr Crosbie is a swell." And Lilian Dale was right; Mr Crosbie was a swell.

    1862 September – 1864 April, Anthony Trollope, chapter 2, in The Small House at Allington. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published April 1864, →OCLC

    “I,” said Binet, “once saw a piece called the ‘Gamin de Paris,’ in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell, who had seduced a working girl, who at the end———”

    1886, Gustave Flaubert, chapter XIV, in Eleanor Marx-Aveling, transl., Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners […], London: Vizetelly & Co., […], →OCLC, part II, pages 239–240

    You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile you get to think yourself a devil of a swell—you and the gods!

    1906, Gilbert Parker, chapter 8, in The Trespasser

    ‘[…] Colleoni’s going to take over this place from you, and he’s got his lawyer. A man in London. A swell.’

    1938, Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC

    Synonyms: toff

12. countableuncountableThe front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.

    Synonyms: pommel, fork

comparative sweller · superlative swellest

1. datednot comparableusuallyFashionable, like a swell or dandy.

   We pay the express, $5 a day our new agents are making and wearing the swellest clothes besides; old agents after one season make twice as much.

   1912, Popular Mechanics, page 20

2. CanadaUSdatednot comparableslangusuallyExcellent.

   Orgasms are swell, but they are not the remedy to every injustice.

   2012 September 10, Ariel Levy, “The Space In Between”, in The New Yorker

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   ...you are my devoted friend too. You do more and work harder and oh shit I'd get maudlin about how damned swell you are. My god I'd like to see you... You're a hell of a good guy.

   1927 Mar. 31, Ernest Hemingway, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

   Jeff swaggered over to Ned Beaumont, threw his left arm roughly around his shoulders, seized Ned Beaumont’s right hand with his right hand, and addressed the company jovially: “This is the swellest guy I ever skinned a knuckle on and I’ve skinned them on plenty.”

   1931, Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key, page 176

   He was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hot-shot and all, […]

   1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, page 23

   […] we’re league champions in basketball and our square-dance team is state runner-up and we have a swell sock hop every Wednesday.

   1958, Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel, page 8

1. CanadaUSinformalnot comparableVery well.

   “That lousy ring wasn’t worth no grand. I did swell to get two centuries for it.”

   1929, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 12, in Red Harvest

   1 more example

   “[…] Last August, when I left The Walls, I figured I had every chance to start new. I got a job in Olathe, lived with my family, and stayed home nights. I was doing swell—”

   1966, Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, New York: Modern Library, published 2013, Part 3, p. 251