Swallowing

How to spell swallowing

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce swallowing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does swallowing mean?

1. verbMaking food, drink, or saliva pass down the throat from the mouth.
2. verbAccepting or believing a story or claim too readily and without question.

Swallowing in a sentence

• The sore throat made swallowing even water painful.

• Investors kept swallowing the company's wild profit forecasts.

• He kept swallowing his pills with a large glass of juice.

• She warned us against swallowing every rumour at face value.

Where does swallowing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb swelgan, meaning 'to swallow, devour or gulp down', a thoroughly native Germanic word with cousins across the family such as Dutch zwelgen and German schwelgen. The original sense was very physical: forcing food or drink down the throat, but it broadened early to figurative uses like absorbing, engulfing, or accepting something without protest. The -ing ending is the ordinary English suffix that turns a verb into its present participle or a verbal noun, so swallowing simply names the ongoing act. The doubled l is the main spelling point: it sits between the short a sound and the ow, and writers sometimes drop one l by mistake. The unrelated bird called a swallow comes from a separate Old English word, swealwe, so the two meanings share a spelling by coincidence rather than by ancestry.

How the word is built

• swallow (from Old English swelgan: to gulp down)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)