swelt

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)

To die.
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

(obsolete) simple past of swell

Anagrams

Welts, welts

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