billow
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ-der.
Proto-Germanic *belganą
Proto-Germanic *bulgijō
Old Norse bylgjabor.
Middle English *bilwe
English billow
From Middle English *bilwe, borrowed from Old Norse bylgja, from Proto-Germanic *bulgijō.
Cognates include Danish bølge (“wave”); Norwegian Bokmål bølge (“wave”), Norwegian Nynorsk bylgje (“wave”); Swedish bölja (“wave”); German Low German Bulge, Bulg, Bülg (“billow, wave”); German Bulge (“billow, wave”). Compare bellow, bawl.
Inflected forms:
form: billows
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: billows
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: billowing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: billowed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: billowed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A large wave, swell, surge, or undulating mass of something, such as water, smoke, fabric or sound.
pos: noun
examples: […] Whom the winds waft where'er the billows roll, / From the world's girdle to the frozen pole;
The snow fell hissing in the brine, / And the billows frothed like yeast.
But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship […]
The banners outflame the blazing morn, / O'er billows of bayonet, sword, and spear.
And the brooklet has found the billow / Though they flowed so far apart.
1893 August, Rudyard Kipling, "Seal Lullaby", in "The White Seal", National Review.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; / Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
Have the swirling sands engulfed them, on a noon of storm when the desert rose like the sea, and rolled its tawny billows on the walled gardens of the green and fragrant lands?
gloss: To surge or roll in billows.
pos: verb
examples: During the preceding afternoon a heavy North Pacific fog had blown in … Scudding eastward from the ocean, it had crept up and over the redwood-studded crests of the Coast Range mountains, […], billowing steadily eastward, it had rolled up the western slopes of the Siskiyou Range, […]
The nuns' veils billowed and flapped behind the snaky line of girls as if the sisters were shooing the serpent from the Garden of Eden.
The black clouds of mercury vapour constantly billowing from the hatter's workshops and out into the streets must have been a horrifying sight.
A section of the Koryo Hotel, one of the oldest and best known hotels in Pyongyang, caught fire on Thursday, sources who witnessed the fire in the North Korean capital told Reuters.
Images obtained by Reuters showed plumes of black smoke billowing from the bridge connecting the two 43-storey towers of the 143-metre (469-feet) structure, which lies a short distance from Pyongyang's bustling train station and the Taedong river that cuts through the city.
gloss: To swell out or bulge.
pos: verb
examples: Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta.
She had changed her auburn hair. Instead of wearing it in a billowing puff over her brow, she had gathered it into a ponytail, secured with a length of yellow yarn.
Derived words: billowingly
embillow
Translations: