| 单词 | swell |
| 例句 | swell verb 1.•her lip swelled up :expand, bulge, distend, inflate, dilate, bloat, puff up, balloon, fatten, fill out, tumefy. ANT shrink, contract. 2.•the population swelled:grow, enlarge, increase, expand, rise, escalate, multiply, proliferate, snowball, mushroom. ANT wane, decrease. 3.•she swelled with pride:be filled, be bursting, brim, overflow. 4.•the program swelled enrollments:increase, enlarge, augment, boost, top up, step up, multiply. ANT decrease. 5.•the music swelled to fill the house:grow loud, grow louder, amplify, crescendo, intensify, heighten. ANT quiet.▶noun 1.•a brief swell in the volume:increase, rise, escalation, surge, boost. ANT decrease, dip. 2.•a heavy swell on the sea:surge, wave, undulation, roll.▶adjective informal, dated •a swell idea:excellent, marvelous, wonderful, splendid, magnificent, superb | informal super, great, fantastic. ANT bad.WORD NOTE swell There's a pleasure in using slightly dated slang. I have an unreasonable affection for the word swell, which in my boyhood was the preferred locution for when you wanted to express enthusiasm or praise something as really first-rate. It was as versatile as terrific or the more recent cool as an informal, all-purpose, thumbs-up conversational rejoinder. Swell derived from the slang word for a patrician or a dandy, an upper-crust fashion plate—what in Britain was known as a toff. Maybe that's why the word appealed so much to the smart set. I love the way the word appears in great American songs. Swell, in the Rodgers and Hart standard “Thou Swell,” is followed by witty, sweet, and grand as adjectives for the beloved. The wit of the title lies in its conjoining of archaic diction (thou) and up-to-date vernacular (swell). The refrain in Cole Porter's “Well, Did You Evah!”—written as a duet for Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the movie High Society —is, “What a swell party this is.” The usage here is half ironic, half sincere, altogether jovial. As the song concludes, Porter swells the word swell to make it rhyme with elegant. It's a “swellagant, elegant party,” the great baritones agree, drinking their bubbly. Now that's swell. — DLConversational, opinionated, and idiomatic, these Word Notes are an opportunity to see a working writer's perspective on a particular word or usage. |
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