swill
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
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.
Inflected forms:
form: swills
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: swills
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: swilling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: swilled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: swilled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A mixture of solid and liquid food scraps fed to pigs etc; especially kitchen waste for this purpose.
pos: noun
tags: collective
countable
uncountable
gloss: Any disgusting or distasteful liquid.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
countable
uncountable
examples: I cannot believe anyone could drink this swill.
gloss: Anything disgusting or worthless.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
countable
figuratively
uncountable
examples: This new TV show is a worthless load of swill.
They have helped foster a corrosive, mean-spirited, angry and divisive atmosphere that May and her lieutenants are too weak to challenge. Into this swill comes Leave financier-in-chief, Arron Banks, who last week announced he was setting up a “Patriotic Alliance” to attempt to unseat 100 Remain-supporting MPs.
gloss: A large quantity of liquid drunk at one swallow.
pos: noun
tags: countable
informal
uncountable
examples: He took a swill of his drink and tried to think of words.
gloss: Inexpensive beer or alcohol.
pos: noun
tags: countable
informal
uncountable
examples: Kesh's assistant, Wilma, wants to surprise Kesh with some bootlegged swill from Kadara.
gloss: A badly-thrown pass.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: To drink (or, rarely, eat) greedily or to excess.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: […] well-dressed people, of both sexes, […] devouring sliced beef, and swilling port, and punch, and cider […]
“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. […]”
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.
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.
The awful judge at the trial, booze-swilling hack James Haggerty
gloss: To wash (something) by flooding with water.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: As fearfully as doth a galled rock / O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, / Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
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 […]
When my turn came for the bath, I asked if I might swill out the tub, which was streaked with dirt, before using it.
gloss: To move (a liquid or liquid-filled vessel) in a circular motion.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Jimmie looked lovingly at the flask, smelt it, and then, placing it next his ear, swilled it round to hear the splash of liquor.
He swilled round the whisky in his glass […]
gloss: To move around or over a surface.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: […] 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.
A flood of fads swilled over all Europe.
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.
gloss: To inebriate; to fill with drink.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: […] I should be loath
To meet the rudenesse, and swill’d insolence
Of such late Wassailers;
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?
gloss: To feed swill to (pigs).
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: “Carlia, have you swilled the pigs?”
Derived words: monkey swill
six o'clock swill
swill-belly
swillbelly
swill-bowl
swill-box
swill-can
swill-flagon
swill milk
swill-pail
swill-pot
swill-tub
swilltub
unrepresentative swill
swill down
swiller
swill up
unswilled
Translations: