swallow
/ˈswɑ.loʊ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.87 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To cause (food, drink etc.) to pass from the mouth into the stomach; to take into the stomach through the throat.
Transitive verb
verb
To take food down into the stomach; to make the muscular contractions of the oesophagus to achieve this, often taken as a sign of nervousness or strong emotion.
Intransitive verb
Example Sentences
- "What the liquor was I do not know, but it was not so strong but that I could swallow it in great gulps and found it less burning than my burning throat."
- "Clothes are to be worn and food is to be swallowed: they remain trapped in the physical world."
- "The four-and-one-half-day trial was centered on acts that neither she nor prosecutors dispute: On July 13, 2012, she drove her Lexus S.U.V. erratically after swallowing Zolpidem, a generic form of the sleep medication Ambien."
- "The necessary provision of the life swallows the greatest part of their time."
- "His body, like so many others swallowed by the ocean's hungry maw, was never found."
- "Elsewhere still, they'd managed to find the wreck of a Japanese midget submarine, and so, when the battleships were done being swallowed by the seabed, some efforts were being made to haul this up as well."
Etymology
From Middle English swolwen, from Old English swelgan, from Proto-West Germanic *swelgan, from Proto-Germanic *swelganą (“to swallow, revel, devour”), from Proto-Indo-European *swelk- (“to gulp”). Cognate with Dutch zwelgen (“to revel, carouse, guzzle”), German schwelgen (“to delight, indulge”), Danish svælge (“to swallow”), Norwegian Bokmål svelge (“to swallow”), Norwegian Nynorsk svelgje (“to swallow”), Swedish svälja (“to swallow, gulp”), Faroese svølgja (“to swallow”), Icelandic svelgja (“to swallow”), Old English swillan, swilian (“to swill, wash out, gargle”). See also swill. The noun is from Middle English swolow, swolwe, from Old English swelh, swelg (“gulf, chasm”) and ġeswelge (“gulf, chasm, abyss, whirlpool”), both from Proto-West Germanic *swelg, *swalgi, from Proto-Germanic *swelgaz, *swalgiz. Cognate with Old English swiliġe (“pit”), Scots swelch, swellie, swallie (“an abyss in the sea, whirpool”), Middle Low German swelch (“whirlpool, eddy”), Dutch zwelg (“gorge, chasm, gullet, throat”), Old Norse svelgr (“whirlpool, current, stream”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: swolwen, swelgan, *swelgan, *swelganą, *swelk-, swolow
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈswɑ.loʊ/
- British English: /ˈswɒl.əʊ/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.
Inflected Forms
swallows (present, singular)
swallowing (participle, present)
swallowed (participle, past)
swallowed (past)
swalow (alternative, obsolete)
swolow (alternative, obsolete)
swallows (plural)