Meaning of Swell | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The act of swelling; increase in size.
   countable, uncountable
2. A bulge or protuberance.
   countable, uncountable
3. Increase of power in style, or of rhetorical force.
   countable, uncountable
4. A long series of ocean waves, generally produced by wind, and lasting after the wind has ceased.
   countable, uncountable
5. A gradual crescendo followed by diminuendo.
   countable, uncountable
6. A device for controlling the volume of a pipe organ.
   countable, uncountable
7. A division in a pipe organ, usually the largest enclosed division.
   countable, uncountable
8. A hillock or similar raised area of terrain.
   countable, uncountable
9. An upward protrusion of strata from whose central region the beds dip quaquaversally at a low angle.
   countable, uncountable
10. A person who is stylish, fancy, or elegant.
    countable, dated, informal, uncountable
11. A person of high social standing; an important person.
    countable, informal, uncountable
12. The front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.
    countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Concentrated are his arguments, select and distinct and orderly his topics, ready and unfastidious his expressions, popular his allusions, plain his illustrations, easy the swell and subsidence of his periods […]”

“the heave of a heavy ocean swell”

“There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea.”

“Now they were faced with the problem of a northerly blow, which could soon send a heavy swell clean into the bay.”

“The Tilbury-Gravesend foot passenger ferry fights its way through a high swell on the river Thames on February 16 2022.”

“He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.”

“Off on the crest of a swell a moving figure was seen now and then. "Antelope," said the hunters.”

“It costs him no more to wear all his ornaments about his distinguished person than to leave them at home. If you can be a swell at a cheap rate, why not?”

“He was dressed in a flashy style, not unlike what is popularly denominated a swell.”

“Between the two extremes of college men the unsocial dig and the flunking swell, lies the majority, who, acknowledging the duty and merit of hard work, see the value in social and recreative line, but are at somewhat of a loss, seemingly, how to proportionize the time given to the different sides of college life, or how far to allow themselves to go on the more attractive side.”

“"I am not in Mr Crosbie's confidence. He is in the General Committee Office, I know; and, I believe, has pretty nearly the management of the whole of it." "I'll tell you what he is, Bell; Mr Crosbie is a swell." And Lilian Dale was right; Mr Crosbie was a swell.”

““I,” said Binet, “once saw a piece called the ‘Gamin de Paris,’ in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell, who had seduced a working girl, who at the end———””

“The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy.”

“You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile you get to think yourself a devil of a swell—you and the gods!”

“‘[…] Colleoni’s going to take over this place from you, and he’s got his lawyer. A man in London. A swell.’”

CEFR level