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Swallow   Listen
verb
Swallow  v. t.  (past & past part. swallowed; pres. part. swallowing)  
1.
To take into the stomach; to receive through the gullet, or esophagus, into the stomach; as, to swallow food or drink. "As if I had swallowed snowballs for pills."
2.
To draw into an abyss or gulf; to ingulf; to absorb usually followed by up. "The earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses."
3.
To receive or embrace, as opinions or belief, without examination or scruple; to receive implicitly. "Though that story... be not so readily swallowed."
4.
To engross; to appropriate; usually with up. "Homer excels... in this, that he swallowed up the honor of those who succeeded him."
5.
To occupy; to take up; to employ. "The necessary provision of the life swallows the greatest part of their time."
6.
To seize and waste; to exhaust; to consume. "Corruption swallowed what the liberal hand Of bounty scattered."
7.
To retract; to recant; as, to swallow one's opinions. "Swallowed his vows whole."
8.
To put up with; to bear patiently or without retaliation; as, to swallow an affront or insult.
Synonyms: To absorb; imbibe; ingulf; engross; consume. See Absorb.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Swallow" Quotes from Famous Books



... necessary, nor can it be avoided, since it is impossible for a man to live for ever; and, as he draws near his end, he is reduced so low as to be no longer able to take any nourishment, unless it be to swallow, and that too with difficulty, the yolk of an egg in the four and twenty hours, and thus end by mere dissolution, without any pain or sickness, as I expect will be my case. This is a blessing of great importance; yet may be expected by ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro

... were a swallow free, That I had wings to fly away: Upon the miller's door I'd be, Where stands my love and grinds all day: Upon the door, upon the sill, Where stays my love;—God bless him still! God bless my love, and blessed be His house, and bless my house for me; Yea, blest be both, and ever blest My lover's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... might and soul we prayed for him again and again; howbeit, as must ever befall, other cares came crowding in, to swallow up that one. As soon as the tidings of the old noble's death were rumored abroad, those who had known him in life came pouring in, and messengers from the town-council, notaries with sealing-wax and seals, priests for the burying, neighbors, and other good folk, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... learn the cause of so extraordinary an occurrence. He found there a woman near death, to whom a priest was trying to administer the sacrament, but without success; for every, time she attempted to swallow it, it was thrown back out of her mouth into the chalice. He perceived it was owing to unconfessed sin, and took away the holy wafer from her: on which his horse rose from his knees, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... it's a very queer tongue," retorted Peter, "and I don't understand it at all. If it's so long as all that, where do you keep it when it isn't in use? I should think you'd have to swallow it to get it out of the way, or else leave it ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... but it was only when he saw in them any taint of cowardice or falsehood; that he was subject, at moments, to such fearful fits of rage, that he had been seen to snatch the glasses from the table, grind them to pieces in his teeth, and swallow them: but that was only when his indignation had been aroused by some tale of cruelty or oppression, and, above all, by those West Indian devilries of the Spaniards, whom he regarded (and in those days rightly enough) as the enemies of God and man. Of this last fact Oxenham was well aware, and therefore ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... everything but my shoes, stockings, breeches and shirt. What a discovery must this have been to me, who, but an hour before, was worth sixty guineas in cash! I cursed the hour of my birth, the parents that gave me being, the sea that did not swallow me up, the poniard of the enemy, which could not find the way to my heart, the villainy of those who had left me in that miserable condition; and in the ecstacy of despair resolved to be still where I ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... faster it ran faster; when we stopped it stopped and looked round at us, and nodded. (I daresay you won't swallow this, but you may safely. It's as true as true, and so's all that about the goat. I give you my sacred word of honour.) I tell you the pig nodded as much ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... the bend not a quarter of a mile away, and was skimming the water with the swiftness of a swallow's dart. Only one man was in it, and he was coming straight ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back of ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... which the mild-eyed stickle-backs sailed serenely, having implicit confidence in the protection of their sharp spinacles, presenting to all enemies an impervious array of bayonets; the shark-like pickerel endeavoring to swallow every living thing; the lazy barvel, everlastingly sucking his sustenance from the animalculae around him; the turtles, snapping at everything in sight with impunity relying upon the impregnable defense ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... the period of his convalescence began, Bennett made this scene over his hourly glass of milk, and invariably it ended by his gulping it down at nearly a single swallow. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... said Jackman, glancing at Junkie and Robin Tips, who sat before him open-mouthed and open-eyed, as if ready to swallow anything... ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... flings its cloud of foam over the faces of Claude and the shrinking girl by his side, and blinds them with salt spray. But high as the tide is, the Chair is still above its reach, and although the wave may sprinkle them, it cannot swallow them up. Only they are deafened as well as blinded, and Bee feels that she is losing her senses. Surely her brain is wandering, else she could never hear the notes of the anthem again, and Tim's voice singing the words of the old psalm in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... kept their parts a dead secret, but items leaked out, and the wildest rumors were afloat. It was whispered that some of the Governors were to be present, and even that Miss Bishop would perform a sword dance, though not the most callow of juniors really consented to swallow such an astounding piece of information. The uncertainty as to what was in store, however, added largely to the pleasurable anticipation, and though the Dramatic Society rehearsed with locked door, and the keyhole carefully stopped ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... by means of hot-water bags or bottles, with great care not to burn a semiconscious patient's skin. The head should be kept low, and two tablespoonfuls of brandy, whisky, or other alcoholic liquor should be given in a half cup of hot water by the mouth, if the patient can swallow. If much blood has been lost a quart of water, as hot as the hand can readily bear, and containing a teaspoonful of common salt, should be injected by means of a fountain syringe ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... prefers to test his customer with a question or two. He gets him pinned in the chair, with his head well back, covers the customer's face with soap, and then planting his knee on his chest and holding his hand firmly across the customer's mouth, to prevent all utterance and to force him to swallow the soap, he asks: "Well, what did you think of the Detroit-St. Louis game yesterday?" This is not really meant for a question at all. It is only equivalent to saying: "Now, you poor fool, I'll bet you don't know anything about the great events of your country at all." ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... eloquence gave him such advantages as to place him unrivalled as the leader of the House; and, although not conciliatory to those whom he led, principles of duty and patriotism induced many of them to swallow humiliations he subjected them to, and to vote as was right, as long as he kept the path of right himself. The sudden departure of such a man could not but produce a momentary astonishment, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... the intention, and none of the pleasure of the practice—'tis true you are so eager in pursuit of the temptation, that you save the devil the trouble of leading you into it. Nor is it out of discretion that you don't swallow that very hook yourselves have baited, but you are cloyed with the preparative, and what you mean for a whet, turns the edge of your puny stomachs. Your love is like your courage, which you show for the first year or two upon all occasions; till in a little time, being disabled or disarmed, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... pot-boilers merely for money; he began to write simply to make the world talk about him, and he hardly cared what the world might say; and he not seldom wrote rank bombast in open contempt for his reader, apparently as if he had made a bet to ascertain how much stuff the British public would swallow. Vivian Grey is a lump of impudence; The Young Duke is a lump of affectation; Alroy is ambitious balderdash. They all have passages and epigrams of curious brilliancy and trenchant observation; they have wit, fancy, and life scattered up and down their ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... police. Bill struck out right and left, and the men in the bar went down like skittles, Peter among them. Then they got outside, and Bill, arter giving the landlord a thump in the back wot nearly made him swallow the whistle, jumped into a cab and pulled Peter Russet ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... nothing to mind either in their inception, or their accumulation, the pitchforking, in fact, of mind out of the universe, or at any rate its exclusion from all share worth talking about in the process of organic development, this was the pill Mr. Darwin had given us to swallow; but so thickly had he gilded it with descent with modification, that we did as we were told, swallowed it without a murmur, were lavish in our expressions of gratitude, and, for some twenty years or so, through the mouths of our leading biologists, ordered ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... any circumstances, and considering the great importance of the adoption of this compact, however irregularly made, to the State of Indiana, as well as the belief that any postponement will probably swallow up what remains to these Indians in debts which they most improvidently contract and the conviction that nothing can save them from moral ruin but their removal west, I think it would be judicious in all views of the matter to adopt and ratify this treaty, and respectfully recommend that it, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... "with Mr. McCulloch, for bestowing offensive epithets on tobacco, which he is pleased to call 'this filthy and offensive stimulant.' Why it should be more filthy to take a pinch of snuff or a whiff of tobacco smoke, than to swallow a quart of port wine, is not to us intelligible. Of all the stimulants that men have had recourse to, tea and coffee excepted, tobacco is the least pernicious. For the life of you, you cannot get drunk on it, however well disposed, and no man or woman has ever been charged ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... I won't!—that is, not yet! I tell you I cannot face the thought of her, much less the sight of her, and her family,—that Valencia! I'd rather the earth should open and swallow me! Don't talk ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... Proserpina! For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's wagon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... should allow him to kiss her before he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks what is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is Robert a saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy Communion. (No, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... after the first few moments were happily past, I felt perfectly comfortable and enjoyed the flight through space and the view of the magnificent landscape far below me. Ah, it is beautiful to cleave the air like a swallow and to ride upon the clouds and the winds of heaven, looking down upon the cities and human dwellings spread like a relief map upon the crystal sheet of the waters, to traverse enormous distances in a ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma

... sick, and felt her own pulse. Ann criticised my nightgown ruffles, and accused me of wearing imitation lace; but nursing was her forte, and she stayed by me, annoying me by a frequent beating up of my pillow, and the bringing in of bowls of strange mixtures for me to swallow, which she persuaded the cook to make and ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... I think he is quite right. But I do resent his saying that I am not a Cockney. That envenomed arrow, I admit, went home. If a French writer said of me, "He is no metaphysician: not even an English metaphysician," I could swallow the insult to my metaphysics, but I should feel angry about the insult to my country. So I do not urge that I am a humourist; but I do insist that I am a Cockney. If I were a humourist, I should certainly be a Cockney humourist; if I were a saint, I should certainly ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... he, "we are really saved; for they might as well pursue a sea swallow on Solway Firth as try to reach us. Row, children, row; never mind if they hear us: the main thing is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Ultramontanes, and we must not swallow more than we can digest. We will not fall into the blunder of Piedmont, which has been more weakened than strengthened by the annexation ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... audible, and to his hostess's pressing entreaties that he would try this dish or not pass that, he did not answer at all. He felt, indeed, as though the muscles of his throat would not let him swallow and if he opened his mouth wide enough to utter a consecutive speech he would burst out crying. A great desire—almost unknown to Vivie hitherto—seized him to get away to some lonely spot and cry and cry, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... this is Flossy's hair-oil. I happen to know that it is harmless, and oil is an antidote for half the poisons in the world. Ruth, swallow this and keep up courage; ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... turned away from that gospel which says, 'It is finished!' 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.' Dear brother, you can do nothing. You do not need to do anything. It is a hard pill for my pride to swallow, to be indebted to absolute mercy, which I have done nothing to bring, for all my hope, but it is a position that we have to take. Hard to take for all of us, very hard for you who have never looked in the face the solemn ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... lake, which abounds with excellent fish, is less favoured in this respect than the land, for it contains numerous crocodiles and alligators, of such immense size that in a few moments one of them can tear a horse to pieces, and swallow it in its monstrous stomach. The accidents they occasion are frequent and terrible, and I have seen many Indians become their victims, as I shall subsequently relate. I ought, doubtless, to have begun by speaking of the human beings who inhabited the forests of Jala-Jala, but I am a ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... hobbled the horse and mules, and turned them loose to graze. Next he unpacked the saddle bags and camp equipage, and proceeded to prepare a small quantity of hot, nourishing soup, which, with infinite difficulty, he at length induced his patient to swallow, a few drops at a time; and finally, with a makeshift pillow beneath his head, the invalid was gently laid down in a comfortable posture, when he soon sank into a refreshing sleep. The weary pair seized the opportunity ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... the street! Just look at old Abe!' And from that time we all called him 'Old Abe.' No one who saw him can forget his personal appearance at that time. Tall, angular, and awkward, he had on a short-waisted, thin, swallow-tail coat, a short vest of the same material, thin pantaloons scarcely coming down to his ankles, a straw hat, and a pair ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... are next shown the glad givers. Probably suspicion had been excited in others than the king, and had checked liberality. People will not give freely if the expenses of the collectors' support swallow up the funds. It is hard to get help for a vague scheme, which unites two objects, and only gives the balance, after the first is provided for, to the second and more important. So the whole nation, both high and low, was glad when the new arrangement ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Climorin: hollow of heart was he, He had plighted with Gan in perfidy, What time each other on mouth they kissed, And he gave him his helm and amethyst. He would bring fair France from her glory down And from the Emperor wrest his crown. He sate upon Barbamouche, his steed, Than hawk or swallow more swift in speed. Pricked with the spur, and the rein let flow, To strike at the Gascon of Bordeaux, Whom shield nor cuirass availed to save. Within his harness the point he drave, The sharp steel on through his body passed, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... hair. 'Tis the common practise of affliction. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handfuls pull'd his hair off his head for sorrow, "Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?" Who has not seen peevish gamesters worry the cards with their teeth, and swallow whole bales of dice in revenge for the loss of their money? Xerxes whipt the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus employ'd a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... bodkin all that had coagulated on the sides of the glass and all that had sunk to the bottom, and presenting this ball, which was about the size of a nut, to the marquise, on the end of the bodkin, he said, "Come, madame, you must swallow the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... tale-bearers from St. Germains; and quidnuncs that knew the last news from Versailles; nay, the exact force and number of the next expedition which the French king was to send from Dunkirk, and which was to swallow up the Prince of Orange, his army, and his Court. She had received the Duke of Berwick when he landed here in '96. She kept the glass he drank from, vowing she never would use it till she drank King James the Third's health in it on his Majesty's return; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... April, and, as I told you, spawn several months in the summer. And in the winter, the Minnow, and Loach, and Bull-head dwell in the mud, as the Eel doth; or we know not where, no more than we know where the cuckoo and swallow, and other half-year birds, which first appear to us in April, spend their six cold, winter, melancholy months. This BULL-HEAD does usually dwell, and hide himself, in holes, or amongst stones in clear water; and in very hot days will lie a long time very ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... goin' to do poolroom work, nowadays, we've got to do it big and comprehensive, same as Morgan or Rockefeller would do their line o' business. You've got to lay out the stage, nowadays, to carry on the show, or something'll swallow you up. Why, when we worked our last wire-tapping scheme with a hobo from St. Louis, who was rotten with money, we escorted him, on two hours' notice, into as neat a lookin' Postal-Union branch office as you'd ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... appeared in one of the balconies of the other house a woman wrapped in a flowing gown, with a red flower in her hair. A young man in evening dress, with swallow-tail coat and white vest, clasped her ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... eighteen hundred and forty-two Four things the sun shall view; London's rich and famous town Hungry earth shall swallow down. Storm and rain in France shall be, Till every river runs a sea. Spain shall be rent in twain, And famine waste the land again. So say I, the Monk of Dree, In the twelve hundredth year and three." Harleian Collection (British ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... to the bright-eyed youth of America, Let me murmur in your ear this never dying truth: When a long-haired crank asks you a dollar to tell you, you are a young Demosthenes, stand up and look yourself over at a distance before you swallow it all. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... drawing-room tables. We should miss the sliding bookcases and picture-stands, the letter-weighing machines and envelope cases, the periodicals and illustrated newspapers—above all, the countless swarm of photograph books which now threaten to swallow up all space. A small writing-desk, with a smaller work-box, or netting-case, was all that each young lady contributed to occupy the table; for the large family work-basket, though often produced in the ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... on the bare boughs only lately scourged by the east wind. After a time the trees are in full bloom, set about into the green of the hedges and bushes and the dark spruce behind. Bennets, the flower of the grass, come up. The first bennet is to green things what a swallow is to the breathing creatures of summer. White horse-chestnut blooms stand up in their stately way, lighting the path, which is strewn with fallen oak-flower. May appears on the hawthorn: there is an early bush of it. Now the grass is so high the flowers are lost under it; ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... sisew," he whispered to himself, a glow of superstition in his fiery eyes. "We have lived long together, and it is fated that we die together, Oh Upisk. The spring has come for us many times, and soon the black winter will swallow us ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... in the ordinary affairs of life, and only upset now by the unforeseen annoyances of an unusually disquieting mission, realized that he was losing caste. It was a novel experience to be rebuked by a chauffeur, but he had the sense to swallow ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... Emilie's skull was fractured—asked fifty times in five minutes whether she did not feel a certain sickness in her stomach, which was the infallible sign of "something wrong"—insisted upon her smelling at salts, vinegar, and various essences; and made her swallow, or at least taste, every variety of drops and cordials. By this time Mad. de Coulanges, who was at her toilet, had heard of the accident, and came running in half dressed; the hurry of Mrs. Somers' manner, the crowd of assistants, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... swallow it if he wants to! But if he does he'll turn green as grass and die of blood ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore

... the far-off future as to the great earthquake that totally engulfed San Francisco. The escape of Oakland seemed inexplicable, but a celebrated German geologist ventured to explain the phenomenon by suggesting that "there are some things that the earth cannot swallow." ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... attention, and compliments—these are the irresistible weapons. These inflate pride and vanity to such a degree that a miserable collapse is necessary. And yet I must be careful, for she is not like some belles I know, who have the swallow of a whale for flattery. She is too intelligent, too refined, to take compliments as large and glaring as a sunflower. Something in the way of a moss-rose bud will accomplish more. I will appear as if falling under her power; as if bewitched by her charms. Nothing pleases your plain ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Oolibuck. "Dat is for keep de chile quiet; and de stick is for no let him choke; him no can swallow ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... the evil deeds that thou hast done, and also great untruth? Then said to him St. George: Ah, sir, believe it not, but come with me and see how I shall sacrifice. Then said Dacian to him: I see well thy fraud and thy barat, thou wilt make the earth to swallow me, like as thou hast the temple and my gods. Then said St. George: O caitiff, tell me how may thy gods help thee when they may not help themselves! Then was Dacian so angry that he said to his wife: I shall die for anger if I may not surmount ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... The clothing should be loosened immediately after the accident, so that the blood may have free circulation, and the patient should be kept in a recumbent position. He should have plenty of fresh air. Camphor or ammonia may be inhaled. If he can swallow, stimulants may be given, as whiskey or brandy, but with care that they do not run into the trachea, or windpipe. If he be unable to swallow, they may be administered as injections, but should gradually be discontinued as reaction takes place. A warm pillow placed at ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... see through, a flower-garden beckons you on. It is also a collection of wonderful field blossoms not to be found in an ordinary garden: the roots of blue campanula, swallow-wort, with its fleecy seed-vessels from which a sort of silk is collected, the spotted turban-lily, alkermes, with its scarlet berries, the splendid butterfly orchis—all of these raised to the rank of garden-flowers, bear witness to the presence of man. And this ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... and gracefully past us. They are young male birds, and in a few months more their plumage, which now resembles that of a turkey-cock, will be jet black, except the wing-feathers. A few drops of rain are falling, so we hurry back to where the carriage is standing under some splendid oak trees, swallow a sort of stirrup-cup of delicious hot tea, and so home again as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... parents' home seemed to him! The stagnation and sordidness of life in the country offended him at every step. He was consumed with ennui. Moreover, every one in the house, except his mother, looked at him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his town manners, his swallow-tail coats, his frilled shirt-fronts, his books, his flute, his fastidious ways, in which he detected—not incorrectly—a disgust for his surroundings; he was for ever complaining and grumbling at his son. "Nothing here," he used to say, "is to his taste; at table he is all in a fret, and doesn't ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame at white heat, rushing through ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... hear of it at Sego. That fetched them. They were by no means pleased with the picture Isaaco drew of their sufferings, and proceeded to save themselves by saving him. As the King their master could simply eat up the King of Bambarra and his army at one swallow, they commanded the release of Isaaco and twenty men to conduct him on his way. At this peremptory message, King Figuing Coroba found it politic to wake, and summoned Isaaco to his presence. The latter obeyed, went through the highest salutations, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... trouble, so much the greater is the need of the advice of an educated and conscientious physician. If concealment is desired, the patient is safe in the confidential relations which every honest physician observes towards those under his care. A man is simply a fool to swallow drugs or compounds of whose nature he is ignorant, or to subject himself to treatment at the hands of one who has no personal knowledge of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... openly, only a foolish bird will be ensnared. A wise one will fly away. An old story relates how a swallow once found safety in the tents ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... I insulted you; I called you a kid. I take it back; I swallow the word. You were never ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... mapped his thoughts. Curly saw his stodgy mind working on the problem, studying helplessly the poker eyes of his easy placid enemy. Was Soapy bluffing? Or had he baited a hook for him to swallow? The faintest glimmer of amusement drifted across the face of Stone. He might have been a general whose plans have worked out to suit him, waiting confidently for certain victory. The longer the convict looked at him the surer he was that he ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... he were only here now, to taste of the good food which daily she cooked afresh for him, and which the cat then devoured because he still failed to come. She herself subsisted on coffee; she could not swallow a single morsel of food; her throat was as though strangled with cords. And her breast was weighed down as with a rock—there was no longer any means by which ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... Sir, than that I should beg your Pardon, that I have made bold thus to interrupt you in the midst of Affairs, which almost swallow you wholly up; but I believe you will the more readily give it me, because this little Script may make my Absence less troublesome to you, because, according to the precepts here given, you yourself will be able ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman

... taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant: long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue fly-catchers; and a black muscivor, with a snowy-white rump, of which I failed to secure a specimen. We also saw the tern-coloured plover, known in Egypt as Domenicain and red kingfishers. The ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... looking at the house which sheltered him, but the sight of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and incapable attitude against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye, drove them away—so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver—to the spacious swallow of the Golden Dragon. The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other man in brown had a bad puncture and was wheeling his machine. Mr. Hoopdriver noted his flaxen moustache, his aquiline nose, his rather bent shoulders, with a ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... place called the Moate, old as King John's time. Mr. Jones had invited Dr. and Mrs. Felton, and had a luncheon comme il y en a peu and wines of every degree: hock from Bremen, brought over by our mutual friend Mr. Jacob, and far too valuable for an ignoramus like me to swallow. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... might just as well have been killed as poor Tolliver was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to the spinal column, and with it a curious affection of the throat and tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be administered by tube, and the tongue is ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... that never tires, Striving for strange effects that he admires, Changes their form from time to time; the land Forever passive to his mad demand, And to the sea's, who with the wind conspires. Here, as on towers of desolate cities, bay And wire-grass grow, wherein no insect cries, Only a bird, the swallow of the sea, That homes in sand. I hear it far away Crying—or is it some lost soul that flies, Above the ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein

... the mistake: we do not feed the heart; we are too professional; we concern ourselves with methods and details; we swallow blindly the elaborate tradition under which we have ourselves been educated; we continue to respect the erudite mind, and to decry the appreciative spirit as amateurish and dilettante. We continue to think that ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... late enough to see all arranged for the night, ending with a more or less successful effort to get old Maisie to swallow arrowroot. She helped Ruth to establish the Granny in her own high-backed chair beside her sister—for neither would relinquish the other's hand—and took advantage of a very late return of Brantock, the carrier, to convey her home, where she ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... galliot—[Canvas spread along the side of a ship of war, in action to screen the movements of those on board.]—They formed the front of their battle with three thousand such coaches, and after the cannon had played, made them all pour in their shot upon the enemy, who had to swallow that volley before they tasted of the rest, which was no little advance; and that done, these chariots charged into their squadrons to break them and open a way for the rest; besides the use they might make of them to flank the soldiers in a place of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... name of punch in remote towns of Arkansas and Minnesota) is here known as "an American." The first time one hears the order, "Bring me an American, waiter, and let him be hot, mind you—as hot as one can swallow him," it is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... touched by the unknown singer vibrated sharply, bringing back her old heartache. He crossed to her quickly that he might show her how completely the memory of that night had been obliterated; that it had vanished utterly and ceased to be, like the ripple stirred to a moment's life by the brush of a swallow's wing on still water. He stood beside her and took both her hands ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... the fireplace where the snow Each winter down the chimney dashes A mass of bell-capped toad-stools grow On viscid heaps of moldering ashes. High on a peg above the rest A hank of rope-yarn limply dangles Like rotted hair, and in the tangles The swallow built her last ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... want to see you get licked," denied Craig irritably. "All I ask is that you shelve some of your cock-sureness. I'm not so dead-broke that I must swallow all of it. I've warned you that he is a strong man. He used to be one of the best ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... his son's boots; but when the unlucky son of St. Crispin brought them to the palace, the prince flew into a rage, beat him severely, and then ordered the leather to be cut into pieces and stewed, and forced the shoemaker to swallow it on the spot—or as much of it as he ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... shouting round him, in frightful parody of his Newspaper Articles, "Grand choler of the Pere Duchene!" Thus perish they; the sack receives all their heads. Through some section of History, Nineteen spectre-chimeras shall flit, speaking and gibbering; till Oblivion swallow them. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... I delivered to my reflection in the glass next morning. My elation of the previous night was as flat as a pancake. Dear, oh dear, what a fool I had been to softly swallow the flattery of Mr Grey without a single snub in return! To make up for my laxity, if he continued to amuse himself by plastering my vanity with the ointment of flattery, I determined to serve up my replies to him red-hot and well ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... longs with ardor to swallow up the pure waters of Jordan, by which are symbolized the persons who are consecrated to God. Hell conspires against them, and lets loose all her monsters, upon them. St. Bonaventure says, "We should not wonder that these persons have sinned, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... makeshift of half-rotten wood that even in this abating wind shook villainously. I stood for a moment and heard the waters lapping and splashing and laughing, as though they would hold it rare and desirable mirth to swallow and spew forth a powerful marquis, and grind his body among the battered timber and tree-boles and dead sheep swept from the hills, and at last vomit him into the sea, that a corpse, wide-eyed and livid, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... honor by the sweete raies of his mistres eies, perswaded himselfe hee should outstrip all other in running to the goale of glorie only animated and incited by her excellence. And as the Estrich wil eat iron, swallow anie hard mettall whatsoeuer, so would he refuse no iron aduenture, no hard taske whatsoeuer, to sit in the grace of so fayre a commander. The order of his shield was this, it was framed like a burning glasse, beset round ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... wisdom; mixed up, according to the modern practice, with a quantum sufficit of virture, and a large double handful of the good of the whole. Yet this is the very dose she prescribes for me! Ay, and I must be obliged to swallow it too, let me make what wry faces I please, or my very prudent lady is not so deeply in love but she can recede! And shall I not note ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... fit, but would not permit the family to be disturbed in their rest till daylight. He breathed with great difficulty and was hardly able to utter a word intelligibly. At his desire he was bled by Mr. Rawlins, one of the overseers. An attempt to take a simple remedy for a cold showed that he could not swallow a drop, but seemed convulsed and almost suffocated in his efforts. Dr. Craik, the family physician, was sent for and arrived about 9 o'clock, who put a blister on his throat, took some more blood from him and ordered a gargle of vinegar and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... make you swell or swole or swellow when you swallow, Cooker?" he inquired; "because, if so, you had better be—" but he was not allowed to conclude his deduction, for cook, bridling, bristling, and incensed, bore down upon the children and swept ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... be convinced by experience that republicans under a military dictator could become tyrannous and oppressive. At the present day, I see many worthy gentlemen, who from being thorough-going individualists, have come to swallow unconsciously the first principles of socialism without the least perception that they have changed, simply because a new meaning has been gradually insinuated into the sacred formulae. Scientific ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... FAX: [673] (2) 225-293 Flag: yellow with two diagonal bands of white (top, almost double width) and black starting from the upper hoist side; the national emblem in red is superimposed at the center; the emblem includes a swallow-tailed flag on top of a winged column within an upturned crescent above a scroll and flanked by ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... moment he was in the house. Lin, in an adjoining room, heard him ask the child if she would miss her big "bruzzer" when he was gone. Entering the room she found Alfred in tears, the sympathetic child stroking his face. Alfred endeavored to swallow the lump in his throat but he only sobbed the more. It did him good as ashamed as ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... enough for three. She dances, she speaks, she sings; she is all-in-all. When she sings, you would say she had the soul of the dove; when she talks, the wit of an angel: when she dances, you would imagine she had, the wings of the swallow: and this evening she sang, and danced, and talked—oh! it was enough to turn ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... and the service of God and the promises!" It was the renouncement of their birthright, the abandonment of their destiny. Pilate well knew what it had cost their proud hearts thus to forswear the hopes of their fathers and acknowledge the right of their conqueror; but to compel them to swallow this bitter draught was some compensation for the cup of humiliation they had compelled him to drink. And he took them ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... the king to the Holy League against the Turk, but especially the contemplated nuptials of a daughter of France with the son of Jeanne d'Albret. Charles replied to these charges in the most politic manner. He prayed that the earth might open and swallow him up, rather than that he should stand in the way of so illustrious and holy league as that against the infidel. As to his zeal for the Christian faith, he demonstrated it—albeit some might object that the fraternal ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... before the movable stall of an astrologer, who has surmounted it with an owl, as an emblem of his magic wisdom. Many of them take this animal for a curiosity imported from foreign countries; for they are seldom able to distinguish a bat from a swallow. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... hothouses,—Sentimental-Calvinist fire traceable underneath! Bancroft also is of the hothouse partly: I have a Note to send him by Sumner; do you thank him meanwhile, and say nothing about hothouses! But, on the whole, men ought in New England, too to "swallow their formulas";* there is no freedom till then: yet hitherto I find only one man there who seems fairly on the way towards that, or arrived at that. Good speed to him. I had to send my Wife's love: she is not dangerously ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to Geoffrey. It meant a baronetcy and eight thousand a year, more or less. How delighted Honoria would be, he thought with a sad smile; the loss of that large income had always been a bitter pill to her, and one which she had made him swallow again and again. Well, there it was. Poor boy, he had always been ailing—an old ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... many of their secrets. Samminiati sends a white powder, and a little phial containing a liquid, both of which, he informs Umilia, are potent poisons, with instructions how to use them and how to get Calidonia to swallow the ingredients. Then 'if the devil does not help her, she will pass from this life in half a night's time, and without the slightest sign ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... is, need one say, no lack today of men with real editorial individuality—but editorial individuality is the last thing the capitalist proprietors want. It is just that they are determined to stamp out. Therefore, your real editor must either swallow his pride and submit to ignorant dictation, or make way for the little band of automatic sorters of manuscript, which, as nine tailors make a man, nowadays constitute a sort of composite editor under the direction of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... have got the nerves," he said contemptuously. "You're imagining things like a pack of frightened women. Duge can't swallow us up, even if he tumbled to our game. I don't believe there's anything in this funk of yours. As to signing that paper, well, we've got to run the Government of this country, as well as a good many other things, if the Government won't leave us alone. Duge's name is on ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Duke and the Army," which toast there was likewise no gainsaying. Colonel Washington had to swallow ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is the life of all compared to thee, And to my love? The bond which holds the world Together may be loosed, a second deluge Come rolling on, and swallow all creation! Henceforth I value nothing; ere I quit My hold on thee, may earth ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... tube, one end of which is inserted into the patient's ear and the other into the ear of the examiner, are required. The nasal end of the bag should be protected with a piece of rubber tubing or be provided with a nozzle. The patient retains a small quantity of water in his mouth until directed to swallow. The nozzle of the bag is inserted into one nostril, and the other is occluded by the fingers of the surgeon. The signal to swallow is then given, and, simultaneously with the movement of the larynx ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... her children the father for whom every evening they had prayed God to guard him from foes abroad and from foes at home. As a gift sent again by Heaven, she received her husband and entreated him to save himself with his family from revolution's yawning abyss, which was ready to swallow them all, and to go away with his own into a foreign land, as his brother had done, who for some months past had been in ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... might have thought that Hollister had some grounds for complaint. For weeks he had been crawling out of his blankets in the pre-dawn darkness of 3 A.M. He had sat shivering down beside a camp-fire to swallow a hurried breakfast and had swung into the saddle while night was still heavy over the land. He had ridden after cattle wild as deer and had wrestled with ladino steers till long after the stars were up. In the chill night he had eaten another meal, rolled up in his blankets, and fallen ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... black snake asleep on the sand. When directly over its victim the jelly globule again sank till it touched the middle of the reptile's back. The serpent immediately coiled itself in a knot, but was already dead. The jellyfish did not swallow, but completely surrounded its prey, and again rose in the air, with the snake's black body clearly visible within it. "Our Will-o'-the-wisp is prettier by night than by day," said Bearwarden. "I suggest that we investigate this further." ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... winsome as they are, early discover the same disposition. When one of them comes into possession of the fore-quarter of a fly, he does not share it with his brother. He does not even quietly swallow it himself. He clutches it in his bill and flies around in circles and irregular polygons, like one distracted, trying to find a corner where he can gormandize alone. It is no matter that not a single chicken is in pursuit, nor that there is enough and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... had been his conduct on a former occasion of a similar kind. Soon after he was brought among us he was seized with a diarrhoea, for which he could by no persuasion be induced to swallow any of our prescriptions. After many ineffectual trials to deceive, or overcome him, it was at length determined to let him pursue his own course, and to watch if he should apply for relief to any of the productions of the country. He was in consequence observed to dig fern-root, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... calms, squalls, bang—there's the fore-topmast gone; rain, calms, squalls—away with the staysail; more rain, more calms, more squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the Equator staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere; Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully." She rejoiced, nevertheless, that her mother-in-law ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... and is living under British protection—protection whereof he is going to get a taste now, so why should we pity him? On we go until long past midnight, when we halt in a secluded little valley. Our horses greedily swallow the icy water, and then eagerly crop the tasteless dry grass, for our waggons are too far behind, we can give them ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar

... seemed like he had stolen the nice boy, eaten him up and swallowed him! But no one hates Sandy. We-all want to do something big and fine. Why, every time I look at him, Mr. Lans, I feel like I must show him how glad I am he—well, he didn't swallow the old ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... we shall always be in 'a land of peace,' and no 'plague shall come nigh our dwelling.' Even when the soles of our feet rest in the waters of Jordan, the waters of Jordan shall be cut off, and we shall pass over on dry ground into the land of peace, where they that would swallow us up shall be far away ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... adoring young Pumpkin, and dreaming along endless vistas of unwearying companionship, was a little drama which never tired our fathers and mothers, and had been put into all costumes. Let but Pumpkin have a figure which would sustain the disadvantages of the shortwaisted swallow-tail, and everybody felt it not only natural but necessary to the perfection of womanhood, that a sweet girl should be at once convinced of his virtue, his exceptional ability, and above all, his perfect sincerity. But perhaps no persons then ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot



Words linked to "Swallow" :   bear, immerse, swallow wort, swallow-tailed, draught, swig, verbalise, take in, withdraw, ingestion, put up, suffer, cliff swallow, wood swallow, mouth, swallow-tailed hawk, consumption, support, stand, swallow dive, intake, swallow shrike, disown, unsay, brook, utter, tree swallow, get down, draft, drink, tolerate, oscine bird, enclose, bolt, ingest, suppress, swallow-tailed kite, Hirundo pyrrhonota, consume, swallow up, eat up, Iridoprocne bicolor, barn swallow, gulp, stick out, tree martin, oscine, destroy, close in, talk, abide, endure, take back, uptake, sip, repudiate, have, accept, take, swallow-tailed coat, martin, repress, digest, Hirundo nigricans, stomach, taste, speak, inclose, believe, aerophagia, swallow hole, verbalize, live with, mouthful, Hirundo rustica, deglutition, bank swallow, demolish, chimney swallow, shut in, white-bellied swallow, renounce



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