Word.ws English Dictionary

swill-belly

swill-belly noun: a drunkard.

Noun

swill-belly (plural swill-bellies)

  1. (obsolete) A drunkard.
    • I'll not account of her as of my child. / Was there no better object for her eyes / But a foul drunken lubber, swill-belly, / A shoemaker? That's brave!1599, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday, act 4, scene 5; Rhys, Ernest, editor, Thomas Dekker, unexpurgated edition, London: Vizetelly & Co, 1887, page 63

Synonyms of swill-belly

Forms of swill-belly

pluralswill-bellies

Origin of swill-belly

From swill + belly.

Questions about swill-belly

What does swill-belly mean?
Swill-belly means a drunkard.
What part of speech is swill-belly?
Swill-belly is a noun.
What is the plural of swill-belly?
The plural of swill-belly is swill-bellies.

Words near swill-belly in the dictionary

  1. swill
  2. swill down
  3. swill milk
  4. swill up
  5. swill-bellies
  6. swill-belly
  7. swill-bowl
  8. swill-bowls
  9. swill-box
  10. swill-flagon
  11. swill-flagons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: swill-belly (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-swill-belly.wav.

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