Dictionary

forswollen en · ADJ

Etymology

From Middle English forswollen, for-swollen, forswellen, equivalent to for- + swollen.

Meanings

1. (obsolete) Excessively swollen; (figuratively) puffed up with pride; boastful; enraged.
   • Who tother day wyth arrowes kéene, haue nayled to the ground, The serpent Python so forswolne, whose filthie wombe did hide So many acres of the grounde in which he did abide. 1567, Arthur Golding, transl., The XV Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis, Book 1:
   • mid-1400s, John Conlee (ed.), Prose Merlin, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998, “The Tournament at Logres; King Lot and his Sons; and Morgan and Gyomar,” p. 285, line 315, “Ha, boyes!”" quod the kynge, “thow art fell and forswollen. […] ”
   • Whilst hee that earst against the Sunne did beake His foreswolne poysonous bulke, doth vanquishd lie In his owne filth: 1595, Barnabe Barnes, Sonnet 57 in A Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets, London, John Windet, […] then I wreake My wrath on Sathan, and vpon his head Mee thinkes (like Michaell or Saint George) I treade

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