Past tense of swell
regular verb
The past tense of swell is swelled. The past participle is swollen or swelled.
Forms of swell
| Base form (V1) | swell /swɛl/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | swelled /ˈswɛld/ |
| Past participle (V3) | swollen /ˈswəʊ.lən/ swelled /ˈswɛld/ |
| Present participle | swelling /ˈswɛl.ɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | swells |
Less standard forms: swole (dialectal), swoll (dialectal).
Swelled and swollen in a sentence
- My ankles had swelled in the heat.
- The organ music swelled.
- He swelled with pride as he held the trophy. His family watched with pride from the bleachers.From the entry pride
- High prices have swelled profits for energy companies, leaving them flush with cash.2023 February 21, Nicole Goodkind, “How oil and gas companies think about their shareholders”, in CNN. From the entry shareholder
- In just months, the lateralists' ranks swelled from thousands to millions to hundreds of millions.2015, John Joseph Adams, Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction, →ISBN. From the entry lateralist
Meaning of swell
- verb To become larger, fuller, or rounder, or expand in size or shape, usually as a result of pressure from within.
- verb To cause to become bigger.
- verb To grow gradually in force or loudness.
Questions about the past tense of swell
- What is the past tense of swell?
- The past tense of swell is swelled.
- What is the past participle of swell?
- The past participle of swell is swollen or swelled.
- Is swell a regular or irregular verb?
- Swell is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
- Is swole correct?
- swole is marked dialectal in Wiktionary. The usual past tense of swell is swelled.
- Is swoll correct?
- swoll is marked dialectal in Wiktionary. The usual past tense of swell is swelled.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: swell (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this page: “Past tense of swell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/swell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.