verb
- Increase in size, magnitude, number, or intensity.
- usage: "The music swelled to a crescendo"
- synonyms: swell
- Become filled with pride, arrogance, or anger.
- usage: "The mother was swelling with importance when she spoke of her son"
- Expand abnormally.
- usage: "The bellies of the starving children are swelling"
- Come up (as of feelings and thoughts, or other ephemeral things. )
- usage: "Strong emotions welled up"; "Smoke swelled from it"
- Come up, as of a liquid.
- usage: "Tears well in her eyes"; "the currents well up"
- Cause to become swollen.
- usage: "The water swells the wood"
- synonyms: swell
adjective
- Characteristic of false pride; having an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
- usage: "a conceited fool"; "an attitude of self-conceited arrogance"; "an egotistical disregard of others"; "so swollen by victory that he was unfit for normal duty"; "growing ever more swollen-headed and arbitrary"; "vain about her clothes"
- synonyms: conceited, egotistic, egotistical, self-conceited, swollen-headed, vain
WordNet 3.0 © 2006 by Princeton University
| APA | WordNet. (2010). swollen. Retrieved September 20, 2026, from http://smartdefine.org/swollen/definitions/1184920 |
| Chicago | WordNet. 2010. "swollen" http://smartdefine.org/swollen/definitions/1184920 (accessed September 20, 2026). |
| Harvard | WordNet 2010, swollen, Smart Define, viewed 20 September, 2026, <http://smartdefine.org/swollen/definitions/1184920>. |
| MLA | WordNet. "swollen" 23 October 2010. Web. 20 September 2026. <http://smartdefine.org/swollen/definitions/1184920> |