to swallow up
21
4.6
- phrasal verb
- /ˈswɑloʊ ʌp/
:
tragarse
- You were almost swallowed up by the sea.
- now swallowed up
It's an enormously flexible machine that swallows up words all the time.
- It's an enormously flexible machine that swallows up words all the time.
- His goal is to make a a conglomerate of bookstores and to swallow up her bookstore.
- Did you still feel connected to that sort of larger entity or did it all feel like it was swallowed up by all of the prescriptions of religious Judaism?
- I had to, or else I would be swallowed up.
- We read that he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry, masonry which shouldn't have been there, an angle which was acute but behaved as if it was obtuse.
- But it's an affirmation of something that's swallowed up by the negation within it or the putting something aside within it, isn't it?
Examples
-
As the flames spread, they quickly swallowed up the old wooden cabin.
-
By now, he had been completely swallowed up by the whirlwind of history.
Fiction book (2001) -
That big bad world out there will swallow you up whole.
-
One day, I will swallow up the world...
-
If the lake were to swallow me up right now... I would die a happy man.
-
Every four million years, they swallow up an area of sea floor the size of the United States.
-
This world swallows up kids like you.
-
There were times when he felt swallowed up by the country, lost in it.
Fiction book (1994) -
The camera slowly pulls back until they are swallowed up by the city.
Fiction book (2001) -
Many return to their hometowns, only to get swallowed up in the nearest urban underworld.
Academic text (1997)
Synonyms
254
1.6
To cover something completely so it cannot be seen
143
4.8
To completely cover or hide something so it disappears
40
5.1
To cover something completely and suddenly, often by fire or water
20
4.2
To cover completely with something so it is hard to see or reach
15
4.6
To cover completely so it cannot be seen, often by water or strong feeling
7
3.6
To take in and hold something, like a sponge taking water
5
2.8
Completely swallow something like land or light
2
4.9
Surround something completely so it becomes hard to see
Antonyms
How Enclosed
Surface Forms
Morphology
swallow + up
The sense 'to enclose or envelop completely' is transparently built from 'swallow' (to take in/absorb) plus the particle 'up' (marking completeness/intensification). Even in metaphorical contexts (e.g., fog swallowing the village) the meaning of being engulfed or made to disappear follows directly from the constituents, and this compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words will likely infer it.
Etymology
Swallow up may come from the picture of a very large animal that swallows something up, taking it into its mouth so it is hidden and gone. So, the phrase now means 'to take or cover something completely so it disappears'.