Word.ws English Dictionary

swallow whole

swallow whole verb: to believe (a lie, excuse, story etc.) in its entirety and without question.

Verb

swallow whole (third-person singular simple present swallows whole, present participle swallowing whole, simple past and past participle swallowed whole)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To believe (a lie, excuse, story etc.) in its entirety and without question.
    • It forbiddeth us to swallow whole the Doctrines and Precepts of men, without examination of them.1683, Isaac Barrow, A treatise of the Pope's supremacy to which is added A discourse concerning the unity of the church
  2. (transitive) To take in, absorb or comprehend something (information, news, etc.) in its entirety.
  3. (transitive) To destroy entirely and instantly.
    • […] when the so-caled^([sic]) First Amendment Defense Act has the capacity to swallow whole almost all of our hard-won protections, if upheld by the courts.2017 February 15, Patrick, kenneth in the (212), archived from the original on 17 Nov 2019

Synonyms of swallow whole

Forms of swallow whole

third-person singular presentswallows whole
present participleswallowing whole
past participleswallowed whole
pastswallowed whole

Questions about swallow whole

What does swallow whole mean?
Swallow whole means to believe (a lie, excuse, story etc.) in its entirety and without question.
What part of speech is swallow whole?
Swallow whole is a verb.
What is the past tense of swallow whole?
The past tense of swallow whole is swallowed whole.

Words near swallow whole in the dictionary

  1. swallow tanagers
  2. swallow the anchor
  3. swallow the dictionary
  4. swallow the leek
  5. swallow up
  6. swallow whole
  7. swallow wort
  8. swallow-tail
  9. swallow-tailed
  10. swallow-tailed kite
  11. swallow-tailed kites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swallow whole (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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