swill

From Middle English swilen (“to wash; swirl; wash away”), from Old English swillan, swilian (“to wash; wash down; swill; gargle”), from Proto-West Germanic *swilljan, from Proto-Germanic *swiljaną (“to gulp, swallow”), from Proto-Indo-European *swel- (“to drink, gulp, swallow”). Related to swallow.

• IPA^(key): /swɪl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪl

swill (countable and uncountable, plural swills)

1. (collective) A mixture of solid and liquid food scraps fed to pigs etc; especially kitchen waste for this purpose.

   Synonyms: hogwash, slops, pigswill

2. (by extension) Any disgusting or distasteful liquid.

   I cannot believe anyone could drink this swill.

3. (by extension, figurative) Anything disgusting or worthless.

   This new TV show is a worthless load of swill.

   • 2017 March 27, “The Observer view on triggering article 50”, in The Observer‎^[1]:

     They have helped foster a corrosive, mean-spirited, angry and divisive atmosphere that May and her lieutenants are too weak to challenge. Into this swill comes Leave financier-in-chief, Arron Banks, who last week announced he was setting up a “Patriotic Alliance” to attempt to unseat 100 Remain-supporting MPs.

4. (informal) A large quantity of liquid drunk at one swallow.

   Synonym: swig

   He took a swill of his drink and tried to think of words.

5. (informal) Inexpensive beer or alcohol.

   Coordinate terms: hooch, rotgut

6. (Ultimate Frisbee) A badly-thrown pass.

swill (third-person singular simple present swills, present participle swilling, simple past and past participle swilled)

1. (transitive) To drink (or, rarely, eat) greedily or to excess.
   • 1771, [Tobias Smollett], The Expedition of Humphry Clinker […], volume I, London: […] W. Johnston, […]; and B. Collins, […], →OCLC, page 188:

     […] well-dressed people, of both sexes, […] devouring sliced beef, and swilling port, and punch, and cider […]

   • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XXI, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:

     “It is time lost,” muttered Cedric apart and impatiently, “to speak to him of aught else but that which concerns his appetite! […] he hath no pleasure save to fill, to swill, and to call for more. […] ”

   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 8, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

     If you can give me no more than twenty-five shillings, I'm sure I'm not going to buy you pork-pie to stuff, after you've swilled a bellyful of beer.

   • 1944, Rutherford George Montgomery (as Al Avery), A Yankee Flier in Italy, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Chapter 1, p. 9,^[2]

     O’Malley answered calmly as he shoved half of the pie into his mouth.

     “Stop! Stop—swilling that pie!” the colonel roared.

2. (transitive) To wash (something) by flooding with water.
   • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

     As fearfully as doth a galled rock / O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, / Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.

   • 1860, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-knife”, in The Mill on the Floss […], volume II, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book III (The Downfall), pages 83–84:

     Already, at three o’clock, Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, who regarded all people that came to the sale as her personal enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by a continual low muttering […]

   • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXVII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, page 197:

     When my turn came for the bath, I asked if I might swill out the tub, which was streaked with dirt, before using it.

3. (transitive) To move (a liquid or liquid-filled vessel) in a circular motion.
   • 1958, Muriel Spark, chapter 6, in Robinson‎^[3], New York: New Directions, published 2003, page 69:

     Jimmie looked lovingly at the flask, smelt it, and then, placing it next his ear, swilled it round to hear the splash of liquor.

   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 14, in The Line of Beauty […], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:

     He swilled round the whisky in his glass […]

4. (intransitive, of a liquid) To move around or over a surface.
   • 1906, Perceval Gibbon, “The Coward”, in Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases‎^[4], New York: McClure, Phillips, pages 222–223:

     […] before them, between the high banks of the Vaal, they saw only a world of brown water, streaked with white froth, hurling down upon them. It rose above the foot-board and swilled to the level of the seat.

   • 1959, Ezra Pound, “Canto 96”, in The Cantos of Ezra Pound‎^[5], New York: New Directions, published 1986, page 654:

     A flood of fads swilled over all Europe.

   • 2000, Hanif Kureishi, “Goodbye, Mother” in Granta 69, Spring 2000, p. 119,^[6]

     The smell, the internal workings of every human being, the shit, blood, mucus swilling in a bag of flesh, made him mad. He felt he was wearing the glasses the stage hypnotist had given people, but instead of seeing them naked, he saw their inner physiology, their turbulence, their death.

5. (transitive, obsolete) To inebriate; to fill with drink.
   • 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:

     […] I should be loath
     To meet the rudenesse, and swill’d insolence
     Of such late Wassailers;

     check it out online

   • 1858 July 17, “A Primary Election at Peter Cooper’s Funny Little Grocery-Groggery”, in Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator, volume I, number 13, page 2:

     Have I not kept open house for three days and nights, and swilled yourself and comrades with liquor for a week, and haven’t you all been drunk at my expense for several days?

6. (transitive) To feed swill to (pigs).
   • 1921, Nephi Anderson, chapter 8, in Dorian‎^[7], Salt Lake City, page 84:

     “Carlia, have you swilled the pigs?”

• swill down

• Wills, wills