swell
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: swĕl
ipa: /swɛl/
rhymes: -ɛl
Forms: form: swells
Etymology: From Middle English swelle, from the verb swellen (modern swell).
Senses: glosses: The act of swelling; increase in size.
glosses: A bulge or protuberance.
examples: text: 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 […]
ref: 1826, Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, 2nd edition, London: Henry Colburn, Volume I, Conversation 6, p. 128:
glosses: Increase of power in style, or of rhetorical force.
examples: text: There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea.
ref: 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 24, in Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:
text: Now they were faced with the problem of a northerly blow, which could soon send a heavy swell clean into the bay.
ref: 1956 September, F. F. Nicholls, “Neyland, A Forgotten Harbour”, in Railway Magazine, page 632:
text: The Tilbury-Gravesend foot passenger ferry fights its way through a high swell on the river Thames on February 16 2022.
ref: 2023 February 8, Barry Doe, “Birmingham & West Midlands Atlas is a fine production”, in RAIL, number 976, page 63, photo caption:
glosses: A long series of ocean waves, generally produced by wind, and lasting after the wind has ceased.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: A gradual crescendo followed by diminuendo.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: A device for controlling the volume of a pipe organ.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: A division in a pipe organ, usually the largest enclosed division.
examples: text: Off on the crest of a swell a moving figure was seen now and then. "Antelope," said the hunters.
ref: 1909, Joseph A. Altsheler, chapter 2, in The Last of the Chiefs:
glosses: A hillock or similar raised area of terrain.
topics: geography
geology
natural-sciences
glosses: An upward protrusion of strata from whose central region the beds dip quaquaversally at a low angle.
examples: text: 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?
ref: c. 1850, William Makepeace Thackeray, “The Kickleburys on the Rhine”, in The Christmas Books of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh:
text: He was dressed in a flashy style, not unlike what is popularly denominated a swell.
ref: 1887, Horatio Alger, chapter 9, in The Cash Boy:
text: 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.
ref: 1892, Occident - Volume 22, page 36:
synonyms: word: dandy
word: dude
word: toff
word: barbermonger
word: beau
word: blade
word: blood
word: buck
word: carpet knight
word: cockscomb
word: dandy
word: dike
word: dood
word: dude
word: dudelet
word: exquisite
word: fashionable
word: fast man
word: fine gentleman
word: fop
word: foretop
word: fribble
word: gallant
word: go
word: jack-a-dandy
word: Jemmy-Jessamy
word: jetter
word: macaroni
word: masher
word: metrosexual
word: mignon
word: petit maître
word: popinjay
word: pretty boy
word: prig
word: puss-gentleman
word: smart
word: spark
word: spiff
word: swell
word: tippy
word: toff
glosses: A person who is stylish, fancy, or elegant.
examples: text: "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.
ref: 1864, Anthony Trollope, chapter 2, in The Small House at Allington:
text: The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy.
ref: 1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 14, in Lord Jim, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, page 176:
text: 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!
ref: 1906, Gilbert Parker, chapter 8, in The Trespasser:
text: ‘[…] Colleoni’s going to take over this place from you, and he’s got his lawyer. A man in London. A swell.’
ref: 1938, Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, New York: Vintage, published 2002, Part Seven, Chapter 3, p. 209:
synonyms: toff
glosses: A person of high social standing; an important person.
synonyms: pommel
fork
glosses: The front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.
Derived terms: ground swell
groundswell
knee swell
one swell foop
shrink-swell
swell box
swell-headed
swell mob
swell-mobsman
swell organ
upswell
Venetian swell
wind swell