[f. prec. sb.]
1. intr. To rise in billows; to surge, swell.
1597. Drayton, Mortimer., 94. A poole of tears … Billow’d with sighes, like to a little maine.
1655. H. Vaughan, Silex Scint., 39. When his waters billow thus, Dark storms and wind Incite them.
1794. Coleridge, Dest. Nations. Ocean behind him billows.
1868. Tennyson, Lucretius, 31. A riotous confluence of watercourses Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it.
2. fig. and transf. To surge, swell, undulate, roll with wavy motion.
1628. Feltham, Resolves, I. xxxvi. (1647), 119. Vexations when they daily billow upon the minde.
1713. Young, Last Day, III. 249. It soars on high, Swells in the storm, and billows through the sky.
1795. Southey, Joan of Arc, V. 120. The yellow harvest billow’d o’er the plain.
1865. G. Macdonald, A. Forbes, xviii. 75. A laugh … billowed and broke thro’ the whole school.
1872. Rossetti, Last Confess., 407. The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud of thunder.
