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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sweal.

To burn slowly.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/swiːl/UK
  1. To burn slowly.

    intransitive
  2. To melt and run down, as the tallow of a candle; waste away without feeding the flame.

    intransitive
  3. To singe; scorch; dress (as a hog) with burning or singeing.

    transitive
  4. To consume with fire; burn.

    dialectal · transitive
  5. To make disappear; cause to waste away; diminish; reduce.

    dialectal · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English swelen, from Old English swelan (“to burn, be burnt up, inflame”) (compare Old English swǣlan (“to burn”)), from Proto-West Germanic *swelan, from Proto-Germanic *swelaną (“to smoulder, burn slowly, create a burningly cold sensation”), from Proto-Indo-European *swel- (“to shine, warm, smoulder, burn”). Cognate with Dutch zwelen (“to smoulder”), Low German swelen (“to smoulder”), German schwelen (“to smoulder”), Icelandic svala (“to cool”). Related to swelter.

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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.