WordWeb Online

1. Characteristic of false pride; having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
   "so swollen by victory that he was unfit for normal duty"; "growing ever more swollen-headed and arbitrary"
   - conceited, egotistic, egotistical, self-conceited, swollen-headed, vain, swellheaded [N. Amer]

1. Increase in size, magnitude, number, or intensity
   "The music swelled to a crescendo"
    
2. Become filled with pride, arrogance, or anger
   "The mother was swelling with importance when she spoke of her son"
   - puff up
    
3. Expand abnormally
   "The bellies of the starving children are swelling"
   - swell up, intumesce, tumefy, tumesce
    
4. Come up (as of feelings and thoughts, or other ephemeral things)
   "Smoke swelled from it"
   - well up
    
5. Come up, as of a liquid
   - well
    
6. Cause to become swollen
   "The water swells the wood"

See also: proud, swelling

Type of: act, arise, behave, come up, develop, do, expand, grow, increase, originate, rise, rise up, spring up, surface, uprise

Encyclopedia: Swell Swell, Gloucestershire