swelt

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /swɛlt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛlt

Etymology 1

From Middle English swelten, from Old English sweltan, from Proto-West Germanic *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)

1. To die.
2. 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:

     Her deare hart nigh swelt, And eft gan into tender teares to melt.

Etymology 2

Verb

swelt

1. (obsolete) simple past of swell

Anagrams

• Welts, welts