Also 1 swelʓere, 6 Sc. swelliar. [f. as prec. + -ER1. In OE. swelʓere = OHG. swelgâri (MHG. swelher, G. schwelger) glutton, tippler.] One who or that which swallows.
1. lit.: see SWALLOW v. 1; esp. a voracious eater or drinker. Also in Comb., as acorn-swallower, sword-swallower.
a. 1000. Ælfric, Colloq., 16, in Wr.-Wülcker, 102. Ic ne eom swa micel swelʓere þæt ic ealle cynn metta on anre ʓereordinge etan mæʓe.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, XIiI. vi. 222. Thir akcorne swelliaris, the fat swyne.
1605. 1st Pt. Jeronimo, III. i. 42. Deuourer of apparell, thou huge swallower.
1694. Motteux, Rabelais, IV. xxix. 118. A huge Greedy-Guts, a tall woundy swallower of hot Wardens and Muscles.
1710. Fuller, Tatler, No. 205, ¶ 2. I … always speak of them with the Distinction of the Eaters, and the Swallowers.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes, vi. (1868), 51. Of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not gregarious.
1891. T. Hardy, Tess, xlviii. The enormous numbers that had been gulped down by the insatiable swallower [viz. a threshing machine].
b. spec. A deep-sea fish, Chiasmodon niger, widely distributed in the Atlantic, having an immensely distensible stomach which enables it to swallow fishes larger than itself.
2. transf.: see SWALLOW v. 3. (In quots. attrib.)
1891. Meredith, Poems, Eng. bef. Storm, iii. Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam. Ibid. (1898), Forest History, iv. The forest’s heart of fog on mossed morass, On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, Revealed where lured the swallower byway.
3. fig. († also with up): see SWALLOW v. 4, 5, 10 c.
a. 1548. Hall, Chron., Hen. VI., 157. Affirming him to be … the moste swallower vp and consumer of the kynges treasure.
1810. Bentham, Packing (1821), 191. Give them an oath to swallow, every impure property is, by this consecrated vehicle, carried off. Note that the oath by which the swallower is rendered thus unlikely ‘to do wrong,’ is the very oath, which is regularly productive of perjury.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., III. I. vi. Here too is a Swallower of Formulas.
