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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

swelt en · VERB · etymology 1

Pronunciation

  • /swɛlt/
  • (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From Middle English swelten, from Old English sweltan, from Proto-West Germanic *sweltan, from Proto-Germanic *sweltaną. Cognate to Dutch zwelten (“to die”).

Meanings

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) To die.
  2. (dialectal, obsolete) To succumb or be overcome with emotion, heat, etc.; to faint or swelter
    • Her deare hart nigh swelt, And eft gan into tender teares to melt. 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
    • Immediatly in smoldering heate of Love the t'one did swelt, 1567, Arthur Golding; Ovid's Metamorphoses Book. 1; line 571
    • Thine Israel, o God, had never endured so hard a bondage under Pharaoh, as to be over-swelted in the Egyptian furnaces a. 1656, Joseph Hall, Songs in the Night:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
swelted Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
swelted Tense=Past lexicographic
swelt Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
swelt Tense=Past lexicographic
swelting Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
swelts Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic

Deriveds

forswelt

swelt en · VERB · etymology 2

Pronunciation

  • /swɛlt/
  • (Southern-England) audio

Meanings

  1. (dialectal, form-of, obsolete, past) simple past of swell
    form of swell