ppl. a. Also 7 welkt, welk’t, wealked. [f. WHELK1 + -ED2.]
1. Formed like a whelk; twisted, convoluted or ridged like the shell of a whelk.
a. 1560. Phaër, Æneid, X. (1562), Gg j b. Him Triton combrous bare that galeon blew wt whelkid shell [orig. concha].
1567. Golding, Ovid’s Met., V. 61 b. With crooked welked [orig. recurvis] hornes that inward still doe terue.
1605. Shaks., Lear, IV. vi. 71. Hornes wealk’d [Qos. welkt, welk’t], and waued like the enraged [Qos. enridged] Sea.
1627. [R. Niccols], Beggers Ape, A 4.
| Yet he with whally eyes and shaggy beard | |
| And welked hornes so Satir-like appeard. |
1876. A. S. Palmer, Leaves fr. Word-Hunter’s Note-Bk., iv. 73. Look up at its [sc. the tree’s] towering expanse of branches, observe its whelked and furrowed bole, and try to clasp it round.
2. Marked with ridges on the flesh, waled, wealed: cf. WHELK2 2. (Sometimes as pa. pple. of an assumed verb *welk: see also below.)
1727. Gay, Fables, I. xliv. The smacking lash he smartly plies; His ribs all welk’d, with howling tone The puppy thus exprest his moan.
1812. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XXXIV. 235. Stripes from the fiend attain her heart, And the whelk’d bosom scar.
1828. Scott, F. M. Perth, xxii. The labour of their welked hands. Ibid. (1829), Anne of G., xxx. My hand has been too much welk’d and hardened by practice of the bow.
¶ In the following Scott uses welk as an intr. verb (? = rise in ridges) in the collocation welk and wave based on a misunderstanding of Shaks., Lear, IV. vi. 71, which he echoes directly in quot. 1827.
1821. Scott, Pirate, ii. The … boatmen saw the horns of the monstrous leviathan welking and waving amidst wreaths of mist. Ibid. (1827), Napoleon, I. viii. 331. Looking out upon the tumultuary sea of pikes, agitated by the fifty thousand hands, as they rose and sunk, welked and waved.
