1
1
as in to gorge
to eat greedily or to excess
they can spend hours at the pub, drinking, chatting, and swilling
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in to drink
to swallow in liquid form
they gathered in the break room each morning to swill coffee together before the morning meeting
Synonyms & Similar Words
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of swill
Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2025
How the temperature and timing of the pour can be the difference between a sublime cup of caffeinated goodness or diner-level swill.
—Anthony Karcz, Forbes, 3 Nov. 2024
Dennis Perkins, EW.com, 10 July 2025
Spies might swill martinis in the movies, but alcohol impairs alertness and judgment and could put you at risk, especially in an unfamiliar country.
—Nathan Diller, USA Today, 24 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for swill
Noun
The muzzle of a hunting rifle poked out from the back seat, and a water bottle on the front console was filled with the brown swill of chewing tobacco.
—Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2025
How the temperature and timing of the pour can be the difference between a sublime cup of caffeinated goodness or diner-level swill.
—Anthony Karcz, Forbes, 3 Nov. 2024
Verb
Seen swilling hooch in her pajamas and stuffing herself with week-old discarded cake, Dee anticipated the guys' every insult with dead-eyed clarity.
—Dennis Perkins, EW.com, 10 July 2025
Spies might swill martinis in the movies, but alcohol impairs alertness and judgment and could put you at risk, especially in an unfamiliar country.
—Nathan Diller, USA Today, 24 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for swill
Recent Examples of Synonyms for swill
Noun
-
The bar program includes cocktails with personal backstories and spice-box flavors, including nonalcoholic sips like the delicate, floral Honey Heist, made with Lyre’s Dry London spirit, cardamom, saffron, honey and ginger.—
USA TODAY NETWORK,
USA Today,
11 Feb. 2026
-
Hey, to the desperately thirsty, even a sip from a mud puddle tastes good.—
Greg Cote
February 11,
Miami Herald,
11 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
Snail goo One of the more artful shots in Wuthering Heights features the clearish mucus of a snail trailing along a window.—
Fran Hoepfner,
Vulture,
16 Feb. 2026
-
Indigenous people and Spanish settlers utilized the viscous goo for medicinal purposes and waterproofing boats.—
Mery Mogollón,
Los Angeles Times,
15 Feb. 2026
Verb
-
And all those who find the Dodgers’ gorging offensive also tend to overlook that their spending provides real benefits as well.—
Ken Rosenthal,
New York Times,
16 Jan. 2026
-
Of all the schemes that humans have devised to keep sea lions from gorging on the salmon of the Columbia River basin, none has worked for long.—
Katherine J. Wu,
The Atlantic,
7 Jan. 2026
Verb
-
The hanging quickly devolves into an all-out bacchanal, as onlookers drink, dance and kiss in the square surrounding the flailing corpse.—
Patrick Ryan,
USA Today,
13 Feb. 2026
-
The appeal was lost on holdovers accustomed to drivers rough around the edges, with a Southern drawl, drinking a beer in Victory Lane.—
Edgar Thompson,
The Orlando Sentinel,
13 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
Ahead of a 40-minute conversation about his starting rotation, the New York Mets’ new 35-year-old pitching coach takes a gulp from a can of unsweetened, black cold brew coffee.—
Will Sammon,
New York Times,
15 Feb. 2026
-
In the last few seconds, the black holes whirl around each other at near the speed of light, emitting ever more powerful gravitational waves until the two actually merge, combining in one gluttonous gulp that leaves behind a single, more massive black hole.—
Phil Plait,
Scientific American,
13 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
The dirt didn’t look different to her: no holes, no ripped piece of lawn, but was there something growing in the mud glop?—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
5 Jan. 2026
-
But mostly, Cronenberg jacks up his own career-long obsessions with glop and grunge and decay to fever pitch.—
Mark Olsen,
Los Angeles Times,
13 June 2025
Verb
-
The holiday marks the end of the pre-Lenten season and is a time for feasting before fasting begins.—
Chris Sims,
IndyStar,
17 Feb. 2026
-
And of course, people feast with a spread of symbolic dishes — one of the most iconic is a steamed whole fish, which represents abundance.—
Lucia Cheng,
Des Moines Register,
17 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
For much of the country, AI has come to mean ChatGPT, Google’s AI overviews, and the slop that now clogs social-media feeds.—
Lila Shroff,
The Atlantic,
17 Feb. 2026
-
But since the explosion of services like ChatGPT, some Wikipedians are spending a lot of time combatting AI slop introduced to the site by human editors who are using ChatGPT and other chatbots to write their entries.—
Imogen West-Knights,
The Dial,
10 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Swill.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/swill. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
