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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]).
  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Eat, replied Aedituus, and drink bravely, old boy; twist like plough-jobbers and swill like tinkers.
    — from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
  4. 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
  5. [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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. you gentry swill like bitterns.’ What a magnate!
    — from Pan Tadeusz; or, The last foray in Lithuania by Adam Mickiewicz
  10. 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

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