Home / Words / swellNo. 0274

swell

/swel/·verb, noun

to grow larger from the inside — by absorbing, filling or rising; (noun) the slow heave of the sea
Fig. 1 — The dough went under its cloth at noon, filling maybe half the bowl.
01Definition

To swell is to grow from the inside: nothing is pumped in and nothing is added from without — the thing takes up water, blood, air or feeling and pushes outward on its own walls. A sprained ankle swells, rivers swell with rain, dough swells under its cloth, crowds and budgets swell past what was planned. The noun keeps the sea's version: a swell is the long, slow heave of open water. Where inflate needs a pump, swelling is what a thing does to itself.

02In use
  • iHer ankle began to swell within minutes of the fall.
  • iiMeltwater swells the river every spring until it presses against the levees.
  • iiiThe protest, small at first, swelled into a crowd that filled the square.
03Collocations
  • swell with pride
  • a swelling crowd
  • rivers swell with rain
  • a swollen ankle
  • the ranks swelled
  • a heavy swell

Family swelling (noun) · swollen (adjective)

04Relations

=bulge, distend, expand, balloon, grow

≠shrink, contract, subside

06TOEFL & IELTS

Task 1 gold for rising figures: numbers, populations and budgets swell — a livelier verb than increase when the growth feels organic. Mind the grammar trap: swelled is the simple past (the ranks swelled), while swollen is the participle-adjective (a swollen river, swollen prices). Hearts swell with pride — the standard emotion idiom. In listening, the sea sense surfaces in navigation and surfing contexts: a heavy swell is wave motion, not size. Against inflate, the line is the source: swelling comes from within, inflating needs air from outside.

07Asked
Is it swelled or swollen?
Swelled is the simple past: the crowd swelled, the river swelled overnight. Swollen is the participle and the adjective — and the test is the helper verb: after have, has or had, choose swollen ('the ankle had swollen by morning'), and before a noun only swollen works (a swollen river). 'Had swelled' survives in some American usage, but swollen is the safe exam form.
Why does 'that's swell' mean 'great'?
Old American slang whose heyday ran from the 1930s to the 1950s, when swell was the everyday word for excellent — 'a swell party', 'that's swell'. By mid-century it had picked up a sarcastic edge ('Oh, swell.') and then dated badly, so today it sounds deliberately retro, like calling someone a dame. Recognise it in films and fiction; do not deploy it in essays.
What is a swell in the ocean, and how is it different from waves?
A swell is wave energy that has outlived its storm: wind builds waves locally, and the longer, smoother undulations that travel on for hundreds of kilometres afterwards are the swell. Surfers and sailors read it by its long period — often ten seconds or more between crests — and its clean, rounded shape, where wind waves are short, sharp and confused.
Is 'swole' a real word?
It is a nonstandard participle of swell that gym culture adopted as an adjective: swole means visibly muscular, as if permanently swollen. Dictionaries now record it as informal slang. It is useful evidence of how the verb works — muscle that has grown from within is exactly what swelling describes — but it belongs to captions and banter, never to formal writing.
What is the difference between swell and swell up?
Adding up points at the visible end-state: a sprained wrist swells, and by evening it has swollen up — the particle says the process has produced something you can now see. Swell alone also covers graceful and figurative growth (music swells, membership swells), where swell up would sound wrong; the phrasal form stays with bodies, bites and bruises.
Can swell take an object — can something swell the numbers?
Yes — the transitive pattern is exam-worthy: late arrivals swelled the crowd, donations swell the fund, migration swells city populations. The subject supplies more of whatever the object holds, and the object grows from within, exactly as the dough in the scene above grows: nothing new in kind, just more of itself, pressing outward against the same container.