Other forms: wallowing, wallows, wallowed
To wallow is to roll about in mud, or to indulge a feeling. Pigs wallow, wallow in self-pity, wallowing in the mire.
For pigs it is temperature control rather than dirtiness: they have almost no sweat glands and mud is how they cool down. The figurative sense is always a criticism — wallowing means enjoying a misery you could get out of.
1verbwallowTo roll about in mud.
“The hippos wallowed in the cool mud at the edge of the river.”
2verbindulgeTo indulge a feeling.
“Stop wallowing in self-pity and go out and find another job.”
wallow is a rolling, or an indulging.
WALLOW → a HOLLOW, and it rhymes
A hollow full of brown water at the bottom of the field, and the pig lying in it rolling over and over, in no hurry at all to get out.
hooks ontohollow
Old English wealwian means to roll, from a Germanic root. Welter and wallow come from the same rolling.
Proto-Indo-European
*welH-
Proto-Indo-European
*welw-
Proto-Germanic
*walwijaną — to roll
Proto-West Germanic
*walwōn
Old English
wealwian — to roll
Middle English
walowen
English, today
wallow
From Middle English walowen, walewen, walwen, welwen, from Old English wealwian (“to roll”), from Proto-West Germanic walwōn, variant of walwijan, from Proto-Germanic walwijaną (“to roll”), from Proto-Indo-European welw-, from Proto-Indo-European welH- (“to turn, wind, roll”). Cognate with Latin volvō (“roll, tumble”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire