Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- To burn slowly.
- To melt and run down, as the tallow of a candle; waste away without feeding the flame.
- To singe; scorch; dress, as a hog, by burning or singeing.
- An obsolete variant of
squeal .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To singe; to scorch; to swale.
- intransitive verb To melt and run down, as the tallow of a candle; to waste away without feeding the flame.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb intransitive To
burn slowly. - verb intransitive To
melt and run down, as the tallow of a candle;waste away without fedding theflame . - verb transitive To
singe ;scorch ; dress (as a hog) with burning or singeing. - verb transitive, dialectal To consume with
fire ;burn . - verb transitive, dialectal To make
disappear ; cause to waste away;diminish ;reduce .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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To swell and to sweal; and this soon he found out,
The Tale of Beowulf Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats Anonymous
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"And now that you are come in, Mr Henry," said the cross old woman, "what for do you no tak up your candle and gang to your bed? and mind ye dinna let the candle sweal as ye gang alang the wainscot parlour, and haud a 'the house scouring to get out the grease again."
Old Mortality, Complete Walter Scott 1801
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"And now that you are come in, Mr Henry," said the cross old woman, "what for do you no tak up your candle and gang to your bed? and mind ye dinna let the candle sweal as ye gang alang the wainscot parlour, and haud a 'the house scouring to get out the grease again."
Old Mortality, Volume 1. Walter Scott 1801
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To day let us caper and sweal out life's taper, __
Larry Grogan 1736
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It cracks me up that you people suck this sweal up like pigs at the corporate media trough.
Drudge Retort 2010
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It cracks me up that you people suck this sweal up like pigs at the corporate media trough.
Drudge Retort Angrydad 2010
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“And now that you are come in, Mr Henry,” said the cross old woman, “what for do you no tak up your candle and gang to your bed? and mind ye dinna let the candle sweal as ye gang alang the wainscot parlour, and haud a’ the house scouring to get out the grease again.”
Old Mortality 2004
hernesheir commented on the word sweal
To singe. To sweal a hog. A sweal'd cat, a cat whose hair or fur is singed off by sleeping in the ashes. Sweal is sometimes applied to a candle that drooses or melts, called in Middlesex flareing.
May 17, 2011