swell

To become bigger, especially due to being engorged.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

“If you drinks a drop more, Miss Lucy, you’ll just go like my pore young sister goed, […] Pop she did not. She swole … swole and swole.” “You mean ‘swelled,’ Cookoo,” corrected Lucille […] “[…] I say she swole—and what is more she swole clean into a dropsy.”

To cause to become bigger.

Rains and dissolving snow swell the rivers in spring.

Mildly it [the wind] kist our sailes, and, fresh, and sweet, As, to a stomack sterv’d, whose insides meete, Meate comes, it came; and swole our sailes, when wee So joyd, as Sara’ her swelling joy’d to see.

To grow gradually in force or loudness.

The organ music swelled.

To cause to grow gradually in force or loudness.

It commenced with a slow crescendo, so irresistibly lugubrious that two of our dogs at once raised their heads and swelled their voices into a responsive tremolo, which may have been heard and appreciated by their distant relatives.

To raise to arrogance; to puff up; to inflate.

to be swelled with pride or haughtiness

The act of swelling; increase in size.

A bulge or protuberance.

Increase of power in style, or of rhetorical force.

Concentrated are his arguments, select and distinct and orderly his topics, ready and unfastidious his expressions, popular his allusions, plain his illustrations, easy the swell and subsidence of his periods […]

A long series of ocean waves, generally produced by wind, and lasting after the wind has ceased.

the heave of a heavy ocean swell

There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea.

A gradual crescendo followed by diminuendo.

He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.

Fashionable, like a swell or dandy.

We pay the express, $5 a day our new agents are making and wearing the swellest clothes besides; old agents after one season make twice as much.

Excellent.

...you are my devoted friend too. You do more and work harder and oh shit I'd get maudlin about how damned swell you are. My god I'd like to see you... You're a hell of a good guy.

Jeff swaggered over to Ned Beaumont, threw his left arm roughly around his shoulders, seized Ned Beaumont’s right hand with his right hand, and addressed the company jovially: “This is the swellest guy I ever skinned a knuckle on and I’ve skinned them on plenty.”