Swollen

How to spell swollen

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce swollen

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does swollen mean?

1. adjectiveEnlarged or puffed up beyond the normal size, often through injury, fluid, or pressure.
2. verbThe past participle of swell, used to describe something that has grown larger or increased.

Swollen in a sentence

• adjective

  Her ankle was badly swollen after the fall on the stairs.

• verb

  The crowd had swollen to several thousand by the time the speeches began.

• adjective

  Heavy rain left the river dangerously swollen by the weekend.

• verb

  His savings had swollen thanks to a year of careful budgeting.

Where does swollen come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Swollen is the old strong past participle of the verb swell, which comes from the Old English swellan, meaning 'to grow or expand'. That verb belonged to a class of Germanic strong verbs that formed their past tense by changing the vowel inside the word rather than adding an ending, which is why we get the vowel shift from 'swell' to 'swollen' instead of a tidy 'swelled'. The same root runs through related Germanic languages, such as the Old High German swellan and the Dutch zwellen, all carrying the sense of puffing up or bulging out. Over the centuries 'swollen' settled into use both as a plain participle (the river had swollen) and as a descriptive adjective (a swollen ankle), and it gradually picked up figurative uses such as 'swollen with pride'. The spelling trap is the unstressed second syllable, which sounds like a faint 'uhn' and tempts writers toward 'swollin' or a dropped letter, when in fact it is the regular -en participle ending.

How the word is built

• swoll- (variant stem of swell, from Old English swellan: to grow larger)
• -en (past participle / adjectival suffix)