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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

swale.

A low tract of moist or marshy land.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/sweɪl/
  1. A low tract of moist or marshy land.

  2. A long narrow and shallow trough between ridges on a beach, running parallel to the coastline.

  3. A shallow troughlike depression created to carry water during rainstorms or snow melts; a drainage ditch.

  4. Bioswale, a shallow trough dug into the land on contour (horizontally with no slope), whose purpose is to allow water time to percolate into the soil.

  5. A shallow, usually grassy depression sloping downward from a plains upland meadow or level vegetated ridgetop.

Where this word comes from

Possibly from Middle English swale (“a shady place, a shadow”), perhaps of North Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse svalr (“cool, fresh”), Icelandic svalir (“a balcony running along a wall”).

noun/sweɪl/
  1. A gutter in a candle.

    UK · dialectal
Where this word comes from

See sweal.

verb/sweɪl/
  1. Alternative form of sweal (“melt and waste away, or singe”).

    alt-of · alternative
Where this word comes from

See sweal.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.