swelt
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /swɛlt/
Audio (UK) (file) - Rhymes: -ɛlt
Etymology 1
From Middle English swelten, from Old English sweltan, from Proto-Germanic *sweltaną. Cognate to Dutch zwelten (“to die”).
Verb
swelt (third-person singular simple present swelts, present participle swelting, simple past and past participle swelted or swelt)
- (obsolete outside dialects) To die.
- (obsolete outside dialects) To succumb or be overcome with emotion, heat, etc.; to faint or swelter
- 1567, Arthur Golding; Ovid's Metamorphoses Book. 1; line 571:
- Immediatly in smoldering heate of Love the t'one did swelt,
- a. 1656, Joseph Hall, Songs in the Night
- Thine Israel, o God, had never endured so hard a bondage under Pharaoh, as to be over-swelted in the Egyptian furnaces
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:
- Her deare hart nigh swelt, And eft gan into tender teares to melt.
- 1567, Arthur Golding; Ovid's Metamorphoses Book. 1; line 571:
Verb
swelt
- (obsolete) simple past tense of swell
Anagrams
- welts