swill
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /swɪl/
rhymes: -ɪl
Forms: form: swills
form: swilling
form: swilled
form: swilled
Etymology: From Middle English swilen (“to wash; swirl; wash away”), from Old English swillan, swilian (“to wash; wash down; swill; gargle”), from Proto-West Germanic *swilljan, from Proto-Germanic *swiljaną (“to gulp, swallow”), from Proto-Indo-European *swel- (“to drink, gulp, swallow”). Related to swallow.
Senses: examples: text: […] well-dressed people, of both sexes, […] devouring sliced beef, and swilling port, and punch, and cider […]
ref: 1771, [Tobias Smollett], The Expedition of Humphry Clinker […], volume I, London: […] W. Johnston, […]; and B. Collins, […], →OCLC, page 188:
text: “It is time lost,” muttered Cedric apart and impatiently, “to speak to him of aught else but that which concerns his appetite! […] he hath no pleasure save to fill, to swill, and to call for more. […]”
ref: 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XXI, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:
text: If you can give me no more than twenty-five shillings, I'm sure I'm not going to buy you pork-pie to stuff, after you've swilled a bellyful of beer.
ref: 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 8, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:
text: 1944, Rutherford George Montgomery (as Al Avery), A Yankee Flier in Italy, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Chapter 1, p. 9,
O’Malley answered calmly as he shoved half of the pie into his mouth.
“Stop! Stop—swilling that pie!” the colonel roared.
text: The awful judge at the trial, booze-swilling hack James Haggerty
ref: 1992 February 2, Mitzel, “Clay Shaw, The Quean Network & That Kennedy Killing”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 28, page 6:
glosses: To drink (or, rarely, eat) greedily or to excess.
examples: text: As fearfully as doth a galled rock / O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, / Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
ref: 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 III, scene i]:
text: Already, at three o’clock, Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, who regarded all people that came to the sale as her personal enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by a continual low muttering […]
ref: 1860, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-knife”, in The Mill on the Floss […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book III (The Downfall), pages 83–84:
text: When my turn came for the bath, I asked if I might swill out the tub, which was streaked with dirt, before using it.
ref: 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXVII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, page 197:
glosses: To wash (something) by flooding with water.
examples: text: Jimmie looked lovingly at the flask, smelt it, and then, placing it next his ear, swilled it round to hear the splash of liquor.
ref: 1958, Muriel Spark, chapter 6, in Robinson, New York: New Directions, published 2003, page 69:
text: He swilled round the whisky in his glass […]
ref: 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 14, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN:
glosses: To move (a liquid or liquid-filled vessel) in a circular motion.
examples: text: […] before them, between the high banks of the Vaal, they saw only a world of brown water, streaked with white froth, hurling down upon them. It rose above the foot-board and swilled to the level of the seat.
ref: 1906, Perceval Gibbon, “The Coward”, in Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases, New York: McClure, Phillips, pages 222–223:
text: A flood of fads swilled over all Europe.
ref: 1959, Ezra Pound, “Canto 96”, in The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: New Directions, published 1986, page 654:
text: 2000, Hanif Kureishi, “Goodbye, Mother” in Granta 69, Spring 2000, p. 119,
The smell, the internal workings of every human being, the shit, blood, mucus swilling in a bag of flesh, made him mad. He felt he was wearing the glasses the stage hypnotist had given people, but instead of seeing them naked, he saw their inner physiology, their turbulence, their death.
glosses: To move around or over a surface.
raw_tags: of a liquid
examples: text: […] I should be loath
To meet the rudenesse, and swill’d insolence
Of such late Wassailers;
ref: 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:
english: Comus
translation: Comus
text: Have I not kept open house for three days and nights, and swilled yourself and comrades with liquor for a week, and haven’t you all been drunk at my expense for several days?
ref: 1858 July 17, “A Primary Election at Peter Cooper’s Funny Little Grocery-Groggery”, in Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator, volume I, number 13, page 2:
glosses: To inebriate; to fill with drink.
examples: text: “Carlia, have you swilled the pigs?”
ref: 1921, Nephi Anderson, chapter 8, in Dorian, Salt Lake City, page 84:
glosses: To feed swill to (pigs).
Derived terms: swill down
swill up