swill-bowl
swill-bowl noun: a drunkard.
Noun
swill-bowl (plural swill-bowls)
- A drunkard.
- But nothing like to that hath been shewed since in the English church by the spiritual tyrant of Rome and his mitred termagants, at the provocation of their oiled swill-bowls and blind Balaamites. For they most cruelly brent those innocents which did but only read the testament of God in their...1547, John Bale, The Second Examination of Anne Askewe; republished in Christmas, Henry, editor, Select Works of John Bale, The Parker Society edition, Cambridge: University Press, 1849, Britannish...
- Wantonness was never such a swill-bowl of ribaldry; nor Idleness ever such a carouser of knavery.1593, Gabriel Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation; or, A New Praise of the Old Ass, published 1815, page 141
- Synonyms:
- reel-pot, squeeze-grape
Synonyms of swill-bowl
Forms of swill-bowl
| plural | swill-bowls |
|---|---|
| alternative form | swylbolle |
| alternative form | swillbowl |
Origin of swill-bowl
From swill + bowl.
Questions about swill-bowl
- What does swill-bowl mean?
- Swill-bowl means a drunkard.
- What part of speech is swill-bowl?
- Swill-bowl is a noun.
- What is the plural of swill-bowl?
- The plural of swill-bowl is swill-bowls.
Words near swill-bowl in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: swill-bowl (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-swill-bowl.wav.
Cite this entry: “swill-bowl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/swill-bowl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.