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1. Increase in size, magnitude, number, or intensity
   "The music swelled to a crescendo"
    
2. Become filled with pride, arrogance, or anger
   "The mother was swelling with importance when she spoke of her son";
   - puff up
    
3. Expand abnormally
   "The bellies of the starving children are swelling";
   - swell up, intumesce, tumefy, tumesce, puff
    
4. Come up (as of feelings and thoughts, or other ephemeral things)
   "Smoke swelled from it";
   - well up
    
5. Come up, as of a liquid
   "Tears swell in her eyes";
   - well
    
6. Cause to become swollen
   "The water swells the wood"

1. The undulating movement of the surface of the open sea
   - crestless wave
    
2. A rounded elevation (especially one on an ocean floor)
    
3. [informal] A man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance
   - dandy, dude [informal], fop, gallant [archaic], beau [archaic], fashion plate, clotheshorse [informal]
    
4. A box or chamber in an organ that contains the reeds or a set of pipes and has shutters that open or shut usually by means of a pedal in order to regulate the volume of musical tone
   - swell box
    
5. A crescendo followed by a decrescendo

1. Excellent
   "he did a swell job";
   - bang-up [N. Amer, informal], bully [informal], corking [Brit, informal], cracking [Brit, informal], dandy, great, groovy [informal], keen, neat, nifty [informal], not bad [informal], peachy, slap-up [informal], smashing [Brit, informal], old, not half bad [informal], grouse [Austral, NZ, informal], ripper [Austral, informal], lovely

Derived forms: swelled, sweller, swellest, swollen, swells, swelling

See also: good

Type of: act, adult male, arise, behave, bozo [N. Amer, informal], cat [N. Amer, informal], chappie [Brit, informal], come up, crescendo, develop, do, elevation, expand, geezer [Brit, informal], grow, guy [informal], hombre [Brit, N. Amer, informal], increase, man, moving ridge, natural elevation, originate, rise, rise up, sod [informal], spring up, surface, uprise, wave

Encyclopedia: Swell, Steve