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Swell   /swɛl/   Listen
Swell

noun
1.
The undulating movement of the surface of the open sea.  Synonym: crestless wave.
2.
A rounded elevation (especially one on an ocean floor).
3.
A crescendo followed by a decrescendo.
4.
A man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance.  Synonyms: beau, clotheshorse, dandy, dude, fashion plate, fop, gallant, sheik.



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"Swell" Quotes from Famous Books



... he were going to place his hand over his heart and bow, with his left arm slightly curved at his side. Grace. This is a pose denoting grace. He got it somewhere from an illustration. And he holds it. Here is life. The real stuff. The real thing. Lights and laughter. Glories, coiffures, swell dames, great actors, guys loaded with coin. His little Mongolian eyes blink through his amusing aplomb. Here are gilded pillars and marbled walls, great rugs and marvelous furniture. Here music is playing somewhere and people are eating off ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... showed their perversity in being dissatisfied with measures for which they should have been grateful to God. Manna displeased them because it did not contain the flavor injurious to health, and they also objected to it because it remained in their bodies, wherefore they said: "The manna will swell in our stomachs, for can there be a human being that takes food without excreting it!" God had, as a special mark of distinction, given them this food of the angels, which is completely dissolved in the body, and of which they could always partake without injury to their health. It is a clear proof ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... was shining down as it only does shine between the tropics, the sky clear and cloudless, the mild breeze, just enough to fill our sails, pushing us gently through the water, the sea as glassy as a mountain-lake, and motionless, save the long, slight swell, scarcely perceptible to those who for long weeks have been tossed by the tempestuous waves of the stormy Atlantic. The sails of a distant ship were seen, far away to the north, making the lovely scene less ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... hilarious group of the younger fry, was just entering the room. She was dressed in flame colour, and her gown was cut very low, plainly to reveal the swell of her ample bosom. Her evening gloves and slippers were golden, as was a broad metallic woven band around her waist. Altogether, striking, rather a conspicuous effort than an artistic success, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... library and took down a book from the shelves. As he did so, he felt a slight pain in his finger, like the prick of a pin. He thought that a pin had been stuck, by some careless person, in the cover of the book. But soon his finger began to swell, then his arm, and then his whole body, and in a few days he died. It was not a pin among the books, but a small ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... a tiny mill, judged by present-day standards, for in a fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... than those privations was the fever which supervened. Apart from the lack of food, a great cause of mortality lay in the change of diet. Potatoes form a bulky article of food, and stirabout, unless very carefully made, used to swell after it was consumed. Many, too, ate raw turnips from sheer destitution, and these also caused swelling of the stomach as well as a dysentery almost always ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... three arrows bristling in its face. It watched him from a distance for a little while, squealing and shaking its head in baffled fury. Then it turned and disappeared over a swell in the plain, running ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... first conceived that air divine, The voice that thrilled his inward ear was thine. The Lark, that even now to heaven's gate springs, And near the sky her earth-born carol sings, Poured on his ear a higher, purer note, And heavenly rapture seemed to swell her throat. To him, from groves of Paradise, the Dove Breathed Eden's innocence and Eden's love; And seraph-taught seemed the enchanting lay The Nightingale poured forth at close of day; For yet nor sin nor ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... fell away, in a sort of swell, for some distance in our front; and, the trees being all of the largest size, and totally without underbrush, the place had somewhat of the appearance of a vast, forest edifice, to which the canopy of leaves above formed the roof, and the stems of ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... to the last point; we must show a little to keep her dead before the wind; we shall have a tremendous sea when we are once fairly away from the shelter of the island. This gale will soon knock up the sea, and with the cross swell from the Atlantic it will be as much as we can ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... coast of Italy by a favourable wind, but as he was afraid of one Geminius, a powerful man in Terracina, and an enemy of his, he ordered the sailors to keep clear of that place. The sailors were willing to do as he wished, but the wind veering round and blowing from the sea with a great swell, they were afraid that the vessel could not stand the beating of the waves, and as Marius also was much troubled with sickness, they made for land, and with great difficulty got to the coast near Circeii.[124] As the storm increased and they wanted provisions, they landed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... showers of arrows his antagonist's steeds and standards as also the handle of his bow, and both his Parshni drivers. But though his bows were (thus) repeatedly cut off, the prince of the Panchalas conversant with the highest weapons continued to battle with him of red steeds. Beholding Satyajit swell with energy in that dreadful combat, Drona cut off that illustrious warrior's head with a crescent-shaped arrow.[38] Upon the slaughter of that foremost of combatants, that mighty car-warrior among the Panchalas, Yudhishthira, from fear of Drona, fled away, (borne) by fleet steeds. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... for the purposes of vengeance or corruption (for to no other will they be applied),—if new demands are made on the Nabob Vizier, (4.) and accounts overcharged on one side, with a wide latitude taken on the other, to swell his debt beyond the means of payment,—(5.) if political dangers are portended, to ground on them the plea of burdening his country with unnecessary defences and enormous subsidies,—(6.) or if, even abstaining from direct encroachment on the Nabob's rights, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... this country have never got beyond the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776. Their bosoms swell against George III, but they have no consciousness of the war for freedom that ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... catch the cry And back its echoes shake; And shouting peals of laughter, The trumpet rushes after, And cries, Wild Spirit, awake! Amidst them flute tones fly, Like arrows keen and numberless; And with bloodhound yell Pipes the onset swell; And violins and violoncellos, Creeking, clattering, Shrieking and shattering; And horns whence thunder bellows; To leave the victim slumberless, And drag forth prisoned madness, And cruelly murder all quiet and innocent gladness. What will ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... with my father, for New Orleans, no voyage could have promised fairer. Mild, sunny weather, with good breezes and a noble ship, that scarcely seemed to feel the deep swell of the ocean, bore us pleasantly on toward the desired port. But, when only five days out, an awful calamity befel us. One night I was awakened from sleep by a terrific crash; and in a little while the startling cry of 'The ship's on fire!' thrilled upon my ear, and sent ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... with all hands. The second escape I have been in the habit of hearing related by an eye-witness, my own father, from the earliest days of childhood. On a September night, the Regent lay in the Pentland Firth in a fog and a violent and windless swell. It was still dark, when they were alarmed by the sound of breakers, and an anchor was immediately let go. The peep of dawn discovered them swinging in desperate proximity to the Isle of Swona[10] and the surf bursting close under their stern. There was in this place a hamlet of the inhabitants, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "The Church service is the only one to be used at sea. Every other sounds—I don't know how—incompatible. There is something in the gentle swell of the rolling waves, and in the grandeur of the horizon, that calls for the finest form of words mortals could put together; and when you have got such a form, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... a "swell," who was as irreproachable in his dress as Horner:—I remember, the whole office felt flattered when his name once appeared in the list of those attending the Queen's Drawing-room; while, his fashionable doings, as recorded in the columns of the ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... obtained, or, if the exact article is not available, a longer one should be cut down to fit. Make a central hole in the bottom of the receiver large enough to allow the funnel to pass through up to the swell, and solder the rim of the funnel to the inside of the receiver, using as little ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... well as warm, such as corresponded to the great interests we had at stake. This force of character was inspired, as all such spirit must ever be, from above. Government gave the impulse. As well may we fancy, that of itself the sea will swell, and that without winds the billows will insult the adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people will be moved, and elevated, and continue by a steady and permanent direction to bear ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... floated about for two nights and two days in the water, with a heavy swell on the sea and death staring him in the face; but when the third day broke, the wind fell and there was a dead calm without so much as a breath of air stirring. As he rose on the swell he looked eagerly ahead, and could see land quite near. Then, as children rejoice when their ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... Snail replied; "How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus, with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth: For, scarce nine suns have wak'd the hours, To swell the fruit, and paint the flowers, Since I thy humbler life surveyed, In base, in sordid guise arrayed; A hideous insect, vile, unclean, You dragg'd a slow and noisome train; And from your spider-bowels drew Foul film, and ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... a stream of men and women poured from every door, and went to swell the main cataract which had risen suddenly in full flood in the Strand. The donkey-barrow of a costermonger passed me, loaded with a bluejacket, a flower-girl, several soldiers, and a Staff captain whose spurred boots wagged joyously ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... his life, even in the concise way, in which I have hitherto attempted it, would be to swell this introduction into a volume. I shall therefore, from this great period of his ministry, make only the following ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... roared and flashed, fast clenched to each other under a cloud of smoke beneath the cloudless tropic sky; while all around, the dolphins gamboled, and the flying-fish shot on from swell to swell, and the rainbow-hued jellies opened and shut their cups of living crystal to the sun, as merrily as if nothing ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... he ever be a cowboy? It is hardly conceivable. Look at Stockton. What was Stockton's young dream? He hoped to be a barkeeper. See where he has landed. Is it better with Cable? What was Cable's young dream? To be ring-master in the circus, and swell around and crack the whip. What is he to-day? Nothing but a theologian and novelist. And Uncle Remus—what was his young dream? To be a buccaneer. Look at him now. Ah, the dreams of our youth, how beautiful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a Bird, sound of a voice— 10 It was so well with me, and yet so strange. Heart! Heart! Swell'st thou with joy or smart? But the Bird ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... creation, Exalted North! I have no station On thy green earth. Thy lineage sharing My pride doth swell, Thou home of daring! ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook

... so that she confessed her love for this "bon garcon" of a painter, and her supreme admiration for his work and the financial success he had made with his art. All of which this genial son of Bohemia drank in with a feeling of pride, and he would swell out his chest and curl the ends of his long mustache upwards, and sigh like a man burdened with money, and secure in his ability and success, and with a peaceful outlook into the future—and the fact that Marcelle ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... a narrower scope, Yet led by not less grand a hope, Hath won, perhaps, as proud a place, And wears its fame with meeker grace. Wives march beneath its glittering sign, Fond mothers swell the lovely line: And many a sweetheart hides her blush In the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... not exactly as Handel left them. Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose; he wore a capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle of the front. Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give him; he wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a cigar in his mouth which was continually ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell—and then grow ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... their flight, and so near that we could see each bird distinctly. Almost simultaneously they alighted on Clover Hill to rest for a moment. I can never forget their motion so full of grace and beauty, waving and undulating like the gentle swell of the ocean. Soon, another company followed in the same direction, and when they were over Clover Hill, up flew the others, and away they went with them beyond our sight. Flock after flock appeared, each taking the same general direction, and some of them so large that they stretched from ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... very kind to mention that, Tom," and William Philander commenced to swell up with pride. "Yes, I do try to keep up with the fashions. But about this entertainment. Who is getting it up and what benefit is ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... tale. I heard it through A Wind whose ancestor it was that blew Ulysses' ship across the purple sea Back to his people and Penelope. We Clouds pick up strange tales, as far and wide And to and fro above the world we ride, Across uncharted seas, upon the swell Of viewless waves and tides invisible, Freighted with friendly flood or forked flame, Knowing not whither bound nor whence we came; Now drifting lonely, now a company ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... perfectly calm, but there now came from the north-east a slowly-heaving swell, which every minute increased, and the whole atmosphere in a short time assumed a sombre, melancholy appearance, while a peculiar light tinged the two ships and sea around, owing to the sun's rays passing through clouds of a dull yellowish-red colour. Before this, numbers ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... day's march for me. I've had my good times, and I've had my bad; and when I come to write the story of my life—when I'm a bloated millionaire, that is!" he added in laughing parenthesis—"it will make fine reading to know that I was once so hard up that I cadged a shilling off a swell ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... were off from the Sandwich Islands to the long swell of the Pacific, the slimy medusa lights covering the waters with a phosphorescent trail of fire all night, the rockweed and sea leek floating past by day telling their tale of some far land. Cook's secret commission had been very explicit: "You are ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... many things relating to marriages that, if particularly treated of, they would swell this little work into a large volume: for we might treat particularly of the similitude and dissimilitude subsisting among married partners; of the elevation of natural conjugial love into spiritual, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... white, the giant game to play. O, lodger in the sea-king's halls, couldst thou but understand Whose be the white bones by thy side, once leagued in patriot band! O, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee, Thine iron sides would swell with pride; thou'dst leap within ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... don't mean you swallowed that, do you? Do you know what the feller did? Why, one afternoon when a swell guy and his girl were out in their gas wagon a mounted cop in the park pulls them in and takes them over to the 57th Street Court. Well, just as me friend is taking them into the house along walks this Charley Nevers wid his tall silk hat and pearl handle ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... were Easterners, clear from New Jersey, and we were Westerners, of Colorado, we sort of eyed them sideways, at first. They had such a swell outfit, you know, and their uniform was smack to the minute, while ours was rough and ready. They set up their tent, and we let them—but our way was to sleep out, under tarps (when we had tarps), in the open. We didn't know but what, ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... hunger and thirst are powerful antidotes to fear. We therefore boldly approached it with confidence in that divine interposition which had been recently so signally displayed towards us. Availing ourselves of the deepest water and the swell of a sea, we were hurried on the top of a breaker, that shook our long-boat like an aspin leaf and nearly filled her with water; but in a moment she was floating on a beautiful bay that presented to the eye "the smooth surface of ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... was now gone from the wooded hills and the days were warm again. The dingy brown coats of the hillsides were changing to the palest green. The buds were beginning to swell. Everything seemed to say ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... world above,— Perfect light and perfect love, At HIS feet our crowns we'll cast, And while heaven itself shall last, Swell the ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris

... which our savans are guilty, at which I do most seriously demur—the extravagant introduction of exotic words into our vocabulary, apparently for no other object than to swell the size of a dictionary, and boast of having found out and defined thousands of words more than any body else. A mania seems to have seized our lexicographers, so that they have forsaken the good old style of "plainness of speech," ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... sun shines down in savage mockery; it strikes upon the bare neck of the quivering wretch, who dare not lift a hand to shift his hat to cover the blistering skin. It strikes in his eyes and burns his lips until they swell and feel like bursting. The barrel of his rifle grows hotter and hotter, until his fingers feel as if glued to a gridiron. The very clothes upon his body burn the skin beneath. He feels desperate; he must shift one arm, for the anguish is intolerable. He makes an almost imperceptible ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... will be quite a new world to you; very different from the little world that you have hitherto seen; and you will have much more to do in it. You must keep your little accounts constantly every morning, if you would not have them run into confusion, and swell to a bulk that would frighten you from ever looking into them at all. You must allow some time for learning what you do not know, and some for keeping what you do know; and you must leave a great deal of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... talents but a bad disposition. When he became of age, he abandoned himself to a life of riot and debauchery, and entered himself, in fact, into that celebrated fraternity, known in France and Italy as the "Knights of Industry," and in England as the "Swell Mob." He was far from being an idle or unwilling member of the corps. The first way in which he distinguished himself was by forging orders of admission to the theatres. He afterwards robbed his uncle, and counterfeited a will. For acts like ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... Swell, organ, swell your trumpet blast, March, Queen and Royal pageant, march By splendid aisle and springing arch Of this fair Hall: And see! above the fabric vast, God's boundless Heaven is bending blue, God's peaceful sunlight's beaming through, And ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of Sir Evan, undaunted Lochiel, Place thy targe on thy shoulder and burnish thy steel! Rough Keppoch, give breath to thy bugle's bold swell, Till far ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... man, "Valhalla's Gods must die!" The Gods and Giant Race that strove so long, Met in their last and mightiest battle field, Must die, and die one death. That prophet-voice The Gods have heard. Therefore they daily swell Valhalla's Hall with heroes rapt from earth To aid them in that fight.' On Heida's face At last the King, his head uplifting, gazed:— There where the inviolate calm had dwelt alone A million thoughts, each following each, on swept, That calm beneath them still, as when some grove, O'er-run ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... ancient nation, For they were bred ere manners were in fashion, And their new commonwealth has set them free, Only from honour and civility. Venetians do not more uncouthly ride, Than did their lubber state mankind bestride; Their sway became them with as ill a mien, As their own paunches swell above their chin: Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour, And only two kings' touch can cure the tumour. As Cato did his Afric fruits display, So we before your eyes their Indies lay: All loyal English will, like him, conclude, Let Caesar ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... locusts' horrid swarms prevail; Here the blue asps with livid poison swell; Here the dry dipsa writhes his sinuous mail; Can we not here secure from ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... have ever been to sea, in a calm, you'd know what a plaguy tiresome thing it is for a man that's in a hurry. An everlastin' flappin' of the sails, and a creakin' of the boombs, and an onsteady pitchin' of the ship, and folks lyin' about dozin' away their time, and the sea a-heavin' a long heavy swell, like the breathin' of the chist of some great monster asleep. A passenger wonders the sailors are so plagy easy about it, and he goes a-lookin' out east, and a-spyin' out west, to see if there's any chance of a breeze, and ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... reading, quite worth looking at. The author, nephew to the celebrated historian of Greece, born to a fair estate, and with a propensity to make verses, spent the one without turning the other to any special account. Amidst much idle matter, whose only purpose is to swell the bulk of the volumes, are some rather interesting anecdotes of literary celebrities. Some over-laudatory epistles from Sir Egerton Brydges, and a characteristic letter or two from Wordsworth, containing among other matters, a criticism upon Scott's Guy Mannering, in which considerable ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... /Epigoniads/ and /Leonidases/, among clear, metallic heroes, and white, high, stainless beauties, in whom the drapery and elocution were nowise the least important qualities. Men thought it right that the heart should swell into magnanimity with Caractacus and Cato, and melt into sorrow with many an Eliza and Adelaide; but the heart was in no haste either to swell or to melt. Some pulses of heroical sentiment, a few /un/natural tears might, with conscientious readers, be actually ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... echoed the Magpie, with a short laugh. "Wot do youse t'ink! He's been luggin' it home to his swell joint up dere on de avenoo, an' crammin' his safe ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... that dread laments they hear, Who pass by night that way; Which the scar'd traveller, so clear, Hears till returning day; When re-embarks sad Isabel, That spectre shade so fair; Then dashing in the water's swell, She vanishes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... told Sabre it was extraordinary how "that class of person" always got in such a horrible state from the most ridiculous trifles. "I suppose I knock my knee a dozen times a week, but my knee doesn't swell up and get disgusting. You're always reading in the paper about common people getting stung by wasps, or getting a scratch from a nail, and dying the next day. They must be in a horrible state. It always makes me feel ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... of the year would afford many pleasing incidents were they permitted to appear in these pages, but their recital would unreasonably swell the volume. ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system works well enough in every case but one—the indictment of a fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and everywhere ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... Barbara. "She is quite a swell. Married him for his money—I don't like her myself, but she's ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... danger from fire excepted, than the ordinary ship, except in very heavy weather. With an ordinary gale, they can contend with sufficient power; but, it is an unfortunate consequence of their construction, that exactly as the danger increases, their power of meeting it diminishes. In a very heavy swell, one cannot venture to resort to a strong head of steam, since one wheel may be nearly out of water, while the other is submerged, and thus endanger the machinery. Now, the great length of these vessels renders ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... His burning hands her locks caress,— And then they gaze, at love's sweet will, Eye into eye with answering thrill! "Wenonah, darling, since we met, Not once could I that smile forget Which told me (more than words could tell) The hopes that made this bosom swell Were fair in our great Spirit's sight. He, ere another moon's swift flight, Shall bid me take thee to my home And joy in thee, no more to roam." Her trustful voice is low and clear, And sweetest music in ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... imperative, having in view the unsettled weather which might be expected in the AEgean. The success of our operations was entirely dependent on weather conditions. Even a mild wind from the south or southwest was found to raise such a ground swell as to greatly impede communication with the beaches, while anything in the nature of a gale from this direction could not fail to break up the piers, wreck the small craft, and thus definitely prevent any ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... of militant Anarchism. By leaps and bounds the movement had grown in every country. In spite of the most severe governmental persecution new converts swell the ranks. The propaganda is almost exclusively of a secret character. The repressive measures of the government drive the disciples of the new philosophy to conspirative methods. Thousands of victims fall into the hands of the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... perished by sword, by flood, and by fire, will blench from my purpose for the outcries of a single wretch? Be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a Christian a part of what thou hast acquired by [v]usury. Thy cunning may soon swell out once more thy shriveled purse, but neither leech nor medicine can restore thy scorched hide and flesh wert thou once stretched on these bars. Tell down thy [v]ransom, I say, and rejoice that at such a rate thou canst redeem thyself from a dungeon, the secrets of which few have ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... it is. Now the sun beams brightly, and the wind is propitious to his course; anon, darkness gathers over his prospects; clouds are lowering; the distant murmur of peril is heard. Too happy is he, if some portentous sign do not swell, and ripen, and at length break upon him, in dread fulfillment of his fears. And what but the same unquiet path do the sons of Ambition tread? Party excitement, and the contests of rival factions, are to them the very breath of life. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... weather was at last met with. It did not show itself in continual rains, but in frequent storms. These could not hinder the progress of the raft, which offered little resistance to the wind. Its great length rendered it almost insensible to the swell of the Amazon, but during the torrential showers the Garral family had to keep indoors. They had to occupy profitably these hours of leisure. They chatted together, communicated their observations, and their ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... course. I thank you for the flattery. Proceed with the programme of the gay, mad life I must lead. I'm going to have a swell time: ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... taking place from the leaves, and if there is no moisture to supply the place of what is lost, the cells collapse and the leaf, as we say, wilts. When water is again supplied the cells swell and the ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... bairns soa weel, May net a skylark's bosom feel As mich consarn for th' little things 'At snooze i'th' shelter which her wings Soa weel affoards? If fowk wod nobbut bear i' mind How mich is gained by bein' kind, Ther's fewer breasts wi' grief ud swell, An' fewer fowk ud thoughtless ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley

... were open to him two especially favored lines: he might be a deep-sea fisherman, meaning by that a crooked card player traveling on ocean steamers; or he might be the head of a swell mob of blackmailers preying upon more or less polite society. For the first he had not the digital facility which was necessary; his fingers lacked the requisite deftness, however agile and flexible the brain which directed the fingers might be. So Chappy Marr turned his talents ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... year of time, and take up our narrative at some distance from the spot above described. It was a deep dell on the banks of the upper waters of one of those streams that serve to swell the Ontario. Perhaps a lovelier spot was never discovered by man. At a place where the river made a bend, there rose from its bank, at some distance from the water, a steep but not perpendicular cliff, thickly grown ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... cares to fool with a married woman," he declared. "There goes Devereux to swell the throng. I say, let's go ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... the material vestment he wears. Conscious of an unchanged personal identity beneath the changes and decays everywhere visible around him, he naturally imagines that "As billows on the undulating main, That swelling fall and falling swell again, So on the tide of time inconstant roll The dying body ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the Voice.—A cold or much shouting makes the vocal cords swell and we become hoarse. Rest is the best cure. It is not polite to shout or whistle in the house and you should never use an angry tone of voice. When talking to a person, always speak distinctly but pleasantly and turn your face toward his and look directly ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... the "Charybdis" but she gave us the slip. She had the "legs" on us all, as the Captain said, and disappeared into a bank of fog to the north. Then we got clear of Cape Race, which we did not see. The wind changed to southwest, and began breaking up the nasty swell that came down the Atlantic. We had made in the twenty-four hours only 210 knots, our position being Lat. N. 45 deg. 36', Long. W. 50 deg. 11'. During the night the rudder gear jammed and our ship began to run ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... him, and in which he succeeded by the aid of his knife. He now saw Lowestoft's high Lighthouse, and could occasionally discern the tops of the cliffs beyond Garlestone on the Suffolk coast. The swell of the sea drove him over the Cross Sand Ridge, and he then got sight of a buoy, which, although it told him his exact position, 'took him rather aback,' as he had hoped he was nearer the shore. It proved to be the chequered buoy, St. Nicholas' Gate, off Yarmouth, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... but its lines, as seen from the intended distance, are both tender and masterly. The knight is laid in his mail, only the hands and face being bare. The hauberk and helmet are of chain-mail, the armor for the limbs of jointed steel; a tunic, fitting close to the breast, and marking the noble swell of it by two narrow embroidered lines, is worn over the mail; his dagger is at his right side; his long cross-belted sword, not seen by the spectator from below, at his left. His feet rest on a hound (the hound being his crest), which looks up towards its master. In general, in tombs ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... than it received; long lines of white, glittering foam following each other, and lending, at moments, a distinctness to the surface of the waters, that the heavens themselves wanted. The ship was bowed low on its side; and, as it entered each rolling swell of the ocean, a wide crescent of foam was driven ahead, as if the element gambolled along its path. But, though the time was propitious, the wind not absolutely adverse, and the heavens rather gloomy than threatening, an ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... powers. The voice of its preachers was the echo of his will. He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of its worship and belief were changed and rechanged at the royal caprice. Half of its wealth went to swell the royal treasury, and the other half lay at the king's mercy. It was this unprecedented concentration of all power in the hands of a single man that overawed the imagination of Henry's subjects. He was regarded as something high above the laws which govern common men. The voices ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... for its waves, the ornaments of warriors for its gems, car-steeds for its animals, darts and swords for its fishes, elephants for its alligators, bows for its whirlpools, mighty weapons for its foam, and the signal of battle for its moonrise causing it to swell with energy, and the twang of the bowstring and the sound of palms for its roar,—alas, even those princes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Begone! to swell the Jingo train and ape the tricks of Tories: Let Rosebery share with Chamberlain his cheap Imperial glories: Let Primrose Leaguers' base applause to Duty's promptings blind you— Desert an outraged nation's cause, and take ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the 'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... subsided some, and the sun shone through the branches. From below rose the song of a robin redbreast, filling the woods with joy. Maya could see it perched on a branch, could see its throat swell and pulse with the song as it held its little head raised up to ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... arise at this, and the orator knew that the ground swell betokened the coming storm. He proceeded with tenfold energy, his words came down like hailstones, with a fiery indignation he delivered his mighty philippic, in a torrent of forceful words he launched out the most tremendous denunciation he had ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... for having helped to swell the crowd of malcontents; and still more for his foolishness in giving the rein to a momentary irritation. As if it mattered a doit what trash these foreigners talked! No thinking person took their bombast seriously; the authorities, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... soapsuds, and fired away from her window as from the embrazure of a fortress; while the swarms of children nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of this hive, waking with the noise, set up their shrill pipes to swell ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... way I am going to enjoy myself and be a swell. You will teach me, Monsieur Savinien. It cannot be very difficult. It is only necessary to wear a dove-colored coat like you, a gardenia in my buttonhole like Monsieur Le Bride, frizzled hair like Monsieur du Tremblay, and to assail ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... she thought I doubted her word, and said: "It didn't hurt Uncle Tim when he was dead as it did when de iron wore big sores way down to de bone, and da got full o' worms afore he died. His neck an' head all swell up, an' he prayed many, many prayers to God to come and take him ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... found an echo in curses that leaped from others. Sandy shrunk back appalled before the hell-blast that breathed upon him, and he felt his wife clutch him closer. Only two of those that were there stood unmoved; they were the two men who acted as Sandy's escort. As the tide of madness seemed to swell higher, they calmly stepped forward and crossed their staves before their charge. There was something in their action full of significance for those who knew. Instantly the crowd melted away like snow under a blast of fire. Had there not been two men ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... silence of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, Bursts at the last about you. Clangour. Queer delight of movement. Then ... the door shuts. Hell darkens about you with the turning key, The silence burns and sears you like a flame; It battens ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... be put up like a prince," said Mac-Guffog. "But mark ye me, friend, that we may have nae colly-shangie [*Quarrel] afterhend, these are the fees I always charge a swell that must have his libken to himsell—Thirty shillings a week for lodgings, and a guinea for garnish; half-a-guinea a week for a single bed,—and I dinna get the whole of it, for I must gie half-a-crown out of it to Donald Laider that's in for sheep-stealing, that should sleep with you ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... to consciousness to suffer. His face began rapidly to swell, and presented a frightful appearance, so blackened was it by the powder, and the smarting was intense. Mrs. Jones, in her isolated life, had been too many times thrown on her own resources to be ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... scared green. So I tucked her under m' arm, and we hit it up across the ocean. Went t' Germany, knowin' that it would feel homelike there, an' we took in all the swell baden, and chased up the Jungfrau—sa-a-ay, that's a classy little mountain, that Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess. She never set down except for meals, and she wrote picture postals like mad. But sa-a-ay, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... near to the Cathedral windows, and at this moment the organ and the choir sound out sublimely. As they sit listening to the solemn swell, the confidence of last night rises in young Edwin Drood's mind, and he thinks how unlike this music ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... off like a filly at the horse show, and some high-collared young man wins her head although she thinks it's her heart. She thinks it's the thing to marry, and he is such "a swell fellow," he is such "good company," and he "dances so well,"—these qualities win ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... had ceased, and was succeeded by a clear, calm day; but it was not until a late hour that the swell had subsided sufficiently to enable them to take any measures for propelling the strange craft that carried them. Then using their hands as oars or paddles, they commenced making some ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... instincts so long repressed, the desire of elevating the debased and corrupt institutions of the land, the need of escaping insane projects, the powerful impulse of the Christian faith, all these sentiments contributed, without doubt, to swell the resistance against which the supremacy of the South has just been broken. This, then, is a legal victory, one of the most glorious spectacles that the friends of liberty can contemplate on earth. It was the more glorious, the more efforts and sacrifices it demanded. The Lincoln party had ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... hath been taken by a greater than I! Her breasts will be pillowed by a much broader chest! Her breasts which do swell like a tender young gourd! Her breasts which are as firm as the meat of the plum! Ough! My spear ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... comrades the touching story of how the stroke fell and how he bore it. "It was at night that I received the order, and I sent for General Thomas," who was to replace him, "He came to the tent and took his seat. I handed him the letter. He read it and as he did so his breast began to swell and he turned pale. He did not want to accept the command, but we agreed on consideration that he must do so, and I told him that I could not bear to meet my troops afterwards. 'I want to leave,' I said, 'before the announcement is made, and I will ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... jaw-bone of a man. Just fancy one of our Jack-tars diving from the Chesil Bank and finding a mate like that below! But we were told that diving from that Bank into the sea would mean certain death, as the return flows from the heavy swell of the Atlantic which comes in here, makes it almost impossible for the strongest swimmer to return to the Bank, and that "back-wash" in a storm had accounted for the many shipwrecks that had ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees," On this glad day: Bless Thou each student band O'er all our happy land; Teach them Thy love's command. Great ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... and just how many were saved. It had been learned that the first section of the train carried 180 passengers and the second 157. It may be stated as undoubtedly true that of the number fifty, at least, swell the horrible ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... sullenly, and dispersed. Out of the east came a soft summer breeze, stealing silently across the valley, and tilting the balance of each dripping leaf. So the great drops of moisture slipped off them to swell the river, and the drying of the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... would only change the topic of abuse with the former, and not cure the mental disease of the latter. It would prevent our eastern capitalists and seamen from employment in privateering, take away the only chance of conciliating them, and keep them at home, idle, to swell the discontents; it would completely disarm us of the most powerful weapon we can employ against Great Britain, by shutting every port to our prizes, and yet would not add a single vessel to their number; it would shut every market to our agricultural productions, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... does he imagine that the fond sister Nelly, ever thoughtful of his pleasures, ever smiling away his griefs, will soon be beyond the reach of either; and that the waves of the years which come rocking so gently under him will soon toss her far away, upon the great swell of life. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... spray, Close on the wild wide ocean,—yet as pure And fresh as Innocence; and more secure. Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep, While, far below, the vast and sullen swell Of ocean's Alpine azure ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... related to Edgar Allan Poe, "De mug what used to write poetry," and when I replied, "Yes, he was my grandmother's first cousin," he, evidently thinking I was too boastful, remarked, "Well, man, you've got a swell chance." ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... that yielding board resting on the two moving supports. I grew dizzy, and thought that I must fall; my spine crept; it seemed to me that I was falling, and my delight at finding myself sprawling upon that stone, which rose and fell beneath me like a boat in a swell, cannot be expressed in words. All I know is that briefly, but earnestly enough, I thanked Providence for ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... on holy Thursday, which fell that year, 1552, on the 14th of April. The sea was calm enough, till they came to the height of the islands of Nicubar, which are somewhat above Sumatra, towards the north. Thereabouts the waves began to swell; and presently after, there arose so furious a tempest, that there scarcely remained any hopes of safety. That which doubled their apprehension, was, that two foists, which bore them company, unable to sustain the fury of the waves, sunk both by one another. The ship, which carried Xavier ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... hither and yon, finally conducted him to the swell Country House surrounded by Oaks and winding Drives ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... wave," as the papers love to name it. In truth the papers make it first and then they name it. Misdeeds of great and small degree are ranged together and displayed in parallel columns as common symptoms of a high tide of violence, a perfect ground swell of lawlessness. To a city editor the scope of a crime wave is as elastic a thing as a hot weather "story," when under the heading of Heat Prostrations are listed all who fall in the streets, stricken by whatsoever cause. This is done as a sop to local pride, proving New ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... hundred tons, with a broad, bluff- bowed hull that rose well out of the water on account of her not having completed loading her cargo. There was a long row of white ports along her side; and, as she rolled with the motion of the ground-swell, now setting inshore with the wind, she showed her bright copper ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... ears may set up vibrations in the drum, so that at night when the head is on the pillow, every beat of the heart is heard as a thump, which banishes sleep, and works the victim into a state of high tension. A pain in the chest, arms and elbows is often felt, limbs may swell (shown by the tightness of rings, collars, etc.) while the hands and feet are usually moist and clammy. The patient may have to empty the bladder every half-hour. Disorders ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... a reputation, backed with the great wealth and power of his father, gentlemen competed with each other to swell his train; he could not, indeed, entertain all that came, and was often besieged with almost as large a crowd as the Prince himself. He took as his right the chair next to Aurora, to whom, indeed, he had been paying unremitting attention all the morning. She was laughing heartily ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... be left behind them; all the four-footed things gather around the elephant, who is overful of drawing-room furniture; the birds flutter their wings; the man with the scythe mows his way through the crowd; the balloons tug at their strings; the ships rock under a swell of sail, everything is getting ready for the mighty exodus into the ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie



Words linked to "Swell" :   rise, bulk, Brummell, rise up, spring up, bulge, elevation, originate, do, develop, grow, adult male, puff out, increase, belly, act, belly out, vesicate, come up, George Bryan Brummell, bloat, behave, Beau Brummell, surface, man, macaroni, coxcomb, colloquialism, puff, good, distend, natural elevation, expand, wave, crescendo, uprise, moving ridge, blow up, arise, blister, cockscomb



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