welter
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈwɛltə/
ipa: /ˈwɛltɚ/
rhymes: -ɛltə(ɹ)
Forms: form: welters
form: weltering
form: weltered
form: weltered
Etymology: From Middle English welteren, equivalent to welt + -er (frequentative suffix). Cognates include German Low German weltern (“to wallow; roll”), Old Norse velta (Danish vælte), German wälzen, Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌻𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽 (waltjan). Akin to wallow and Latin volvō.
Senses: examples: text: […] were it not for shame,
Shame and dishonour to a soldier’s name,
Upon my weapon’s point here shouldst thou fall,
And welter in thy gore.
ref: 1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, [Act II]:
text: I had no horse, and the deep and wheeling stream of the river, rendered turbid by the late tumult of which its channel had been the scene, and seeming yet more so under the doubtful influence of an imperfect moonlight, had no inviting influence for a pedestrian by no means accustomed to wade rivers, and who had lately seen horsemen weltering, in this dangerous passage, up to the very saddle laps.
ref: 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter [VI], in Rob Roy. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 168:
text: And behind, the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o’er-brimming deep;
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
ref: 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, lines 11–18:
text: You must request their advice how to avert this tremendous evil: you must weep over the decrepid fathers of families, the virtuous wives, the innocent children, the priests at the altar, with God in their mouths, weltering in their blood.
ref: 1824, Walter Savage Landor, “Conversation XVI. The Emperor Alexander and Capo d’Istria”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume 1, London: Taylor and Hessey, page 314:
glosses: To roll around; to wallow.
examples: text: 1537, Hugh Latimer, Sermon III, Preached to the Convocation of the Clergy, in The Sermons of Hugh Latimer, London: J. Scott, 1783, Volume I, p. 38,
When we welter in pleasures and idleness, then we eat and drink with drunkards.
text: These wisards weltre in welths waues,
pampred in pleasures deepe,
They han fatte kernes, and leany knaues,
ref: 1579, Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender, “Ivlye” [“July”], lines 197-198, in Ernest de Sélincourt (ed.) Spenser’s Minor Poems, Oxford: Clarendon Press,1910, p. 73
roman: their fasting flockes to keepe.
glosses: To revel, luxuriate.
examples: text: Such Musick (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator Great
His constellations set,
And the well-ballanc’t world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltring waves their oozy channel keep.
ref: 1645, John Milton, “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, London: Humphrey Moseley, Stanza XII, pp. 6-7:
text: There, waves that, hardly weltering, die away,
Tip their smooth ridges with a softer ray;
ref: 1793, William Wordsworth, “An Evening Walk. Addressed to a Young Lady”, in The Poetical Works of Wordsworth, New York: John W. Lovell, published 1800, page 17:
text: Many a fixed unblinking star
Unto them that wandering are
Thro’ this blindly-weltering sea—
ref: 1835, Richard Chenevix Trench, “The Descent of the Rhone”, in The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, page 78:
text: The circle of weltering froth at the base of the Horseshoe, emerging from the dead white vapours—absolute white, as moonless midnight is absolute black—which muffle impenetrably the crash of the river upon the lower bed, melts slowly into the darker shades of green.
ref: 1883, Henry James, “XX. Niagara”, in Portraits of Places, London: Macmillan, page 369:
text: He was dead; and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb of the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay, splashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into a weltering tumult of dazzling light.
ref: 1896, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Chapter 19”, in The Island of Doctor Moreau (Heinemann’s Colonial Library of Popular Fiction; 52), London: William Heinemann, →OCLC; republished as The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Possibility, New York, N.Y.: Stone & Kimball, 1896, →OCLC:
text: All the morn old Noah marvelled greatly
At this weltering world that shone so stately,
Drowning deep the rivers and the plains.
ref: 1918, Siegfried Sassoon, “Noah”, in The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems, New York: Dutton, page 58:
qualifier: billows
glosses: To rise and fall, to tumble over, to roll.
raw_tags: of waves
Derived terms: bewelter