Other forms: swilling
To swill is to drink greedily, or to rinse something with water. Swill it down, swill out the bucket, pig swill.
The drinking sense is disapproving and implies quantity without appreciation. The rinsing sense is the older one and is still ordinary in British use: swill out the yard. As a noun, swill is the liquid food given to pigs, and feeding food waste as swill has been banned in Britain since 2001 for disease reasons. Note swill around, meaning to slosh about.
1verbswillTo drink greedily, or to rinse with water.
“He swilled out the bucket with cold water from the hose.”
2nounliquidLiquid food given to pigs.
“The farmer tipped a bucket of swill into the pigs' trough.”
swill is a drinking or rinsing.
Old English swilian meant to wash or rinse. The drinking sense grew from the idea of liquid moving about, which is the same image as swilling a bucket.
Proto-Indo-European
*swel- — to drink, gulp, swallow
Proto-Germanic
*swiljaną — to gulp, swallow
Proto-West Germanic
*swilljan
Old English
swillan
Middle English
swilen — to wash; swirl; wash away
English, today
swill
Built from
From Middle English swilen (“to wash; swirl; wash away”), from Old English swillan, swilian (“to wash; wash down; swill; gargle”), from Proto-West Germanic swilljan, from Proto-Germanic swiljaną (“to gulp, swallow”), from Proto-Indo-European swel- (“to drink, gulp, swallow”). Related to swallow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire