Literary notes about Swill (AI summary)
The word “swill” is deployed in literature with a rich diversity of connotations, ranging from the description of unrestrained drinking and eating to denoting low-quality sustenance. It is often used as a verb to evoke the imagery of guzzling down beverages or food in a careless, sometimes animalistic manner—as when characters swill beer by the bucket or fill their bellies with wine ([1], [2], [3], [4]). At times the term also refers to refuse or leftover feed, as seen when it describes the nourishment of swine or denotes by-products unfit for human consumption ([5], [6], [7]). Moreover, authors employ “swill” both literally and metaphorically to underscore themes of debasement and excess, whether in political satire or in the energetic revelries of a chaotic feast ([8], [9], [10]).
- He was the type you expect to swill beer by the bucket and put away a pie in a sitting.
— from Greenmantle by John Buchan - I might have been snivelling myself, if I had cared to swill my belly with wine.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 12 by Robert Louis Stevenson - Eat, replied Aedituus, and drink bravely, old boy; twist like plough-jobbers and swill like tinkers.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - Every man, therefore, in the army began to tipple, ply the pot, swill and guzzle it as fast as they could.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - [58] Probably house of draffs; place of swine, swill, lees.
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Sæmundur fróði - Do you know why I'm sitting in this empty house, feeding on the pig's swill that old lady in the kitchen calls food?
— from Masterman and Son by W. J. (William James) Dawson - It became the practice for milk-dealers to send to the various distilleries and purchase swill, which they fed to their cows.
— from A History of the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, Volume II. by Stephen M. Ostrander - And in office he shall be, for I shall keep him there, if I have to swill whisky by the barrel in election times, see if I don't.”
— from The Squatter and the Don
A Novel Descriptive of Contemporary Occurrences in California by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton - you gentry swill like bitterns.’ What a magnate!
— from Pan Tadeusz; or, The last foray in Lithuania by Adam Mickiewicz - Loathsome verbal swill doth it vomit forth!—And they make newspapers also out of this verbal swill.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche