Also 6 swyl, swyll, 6–7 swil. [f. SWILL v.]
1. Liquid, or partly liquid, food, chiefly kitchen refuse, given to swine; hog-wash, pig-wash.
a. 1570. Black-Letter Ball. & Broadsides (1867), 131. I serue your swyne with draffe and swyl.
1570. Foxe, A. & M. (ed. 2), I. 138/1. Swyl and draffe, wont to be giuen to their hogs.
1626. Breton, Fantastickes, Wks. (Grosart), II. 13/2. The Hogges cry till they haue their swill.
1666. J. Alleine, Lett., xxvi., in Life (1672), 93. Every Swine will have his swill.
1707. Mortimer, Husb. (1721), I. 249. ’Tis good to give them [sc. pigs] such swill as you have every Morning and Evening to make them come home to their Coats.
1817–8. Cobbett, Resid. U. S. (1822), 174. The milk and fat pot-liquor and meal are, when put together, called, in Long Island, swill.
1864. H. Jones, Holiday Papers, 45. Many a time have I watched the yardman baling out swill for the pigs with a ladle.
1913. G. G. Coulton, in Rep. 7th Ann. Meeting Hist. Assoc., 13. The pig bred for pork, to which everything is given indiscriminately and simultaneously, in the form of swill or slop.
b. fig.
1553. M. Wood, trans. Gardiner’s True Obed., To Rdr. B iv. He … geueth vs leaue, according to our demerites, to be fed with the swil and draffe, of masing masses.
1554–5. Hooper, in Foxe, A. & M. (1563), 1061/1. I am swill and sincke of sin.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, VII. ii. 555. And yet our countryman Harding, leauing the cleare waters of truth, hath swallowed the same swill, as the Iewell of our Church hath taught him.
a. 1653. G. Daniel, Idyll., v. 107. Throw yt Course Branne, with the Swill of Humors, a Mash made For Sickly Tirants.
1901. Winston Churchill, Crisis, I. x. You will not think of us as foreign swill, but as patriots.
c. transf. A liquid or partly liquid mess, a slop.
1665. Needham, Med. Medicinæ, 47. It contemns all those large Pectoral Swils, long Syrups, and Electuaries.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., III. 499. If the state of the ingesta is usually rather that of a sour fermented ‘swill.’
1903. Cutcliffe Hyne, McTodd, iv. 87. The place was full of steam, too, from the swill slopping against the boiler fires.
2. Copious or heavy drinking; liquor, esp. when drunk to excess; † a draught or swig (of liquor).
1602. Breton, Mother’s Blessing, xlv. Weare not a feather in a showre of raine, Nor swagger with a Swiser for his swill.
1641. H. L’Estrange, God’s Sabbath, 132. To spend the hole day in swinish swill, lascivious wantonnesse,… and in the true service of Satan.
1654. R. Codrington, trans. Iustine, XXIV. 339. The Gauls falling to their swill of Wine as to their prey.
1726–31. Waldron, Descr. Isle of Man (1865), 56. As soon as he had recruited himself with a hearty swill of brandy.
1730–46. Thomson, Autumn, 538. As they swim in mutual swill.
1846. Ld. Stanley in Croker Papers (1884), III. 87. A pail of ale, with a bottle of gin in it, from which every man takes a swill.
1864. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., XV. i. IV. 7. Eminent swill of drinking, with the loud coarse talk supposable, on the part of Mentzel and consorts did go on.
3. Comb., as swill-cistern, -house, -pail; swill-engrossing adj.
(See also SWILL v. 5; also SWILL-TUB)
1631. Fuller, David’s Heinous Sin (1867), 212. Swill-engrossing swine, with greedy throats.
1833. Loudon, Encycl. Archit., § 866. Swill-cisterns and tanks for holding liquid food. Ibid., Gloss., Swill house, place for preparing pigs’ food.
1889. Fernald, in Voice (N. Y.), 3 Oct. Buy green apples at the highest market price, and throw them into the swill-pail.
