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An esculent swallow.

Eating or swallowing stones or gravel, as the ostrich.

To swallow or eat greedily; to devour; hence, to swallow up. [Obs.] Too far off from great cities, which may hinder business; too near them, which lurcheth all provisions, and maketh everything dear. Bacon.

One of several species of swallows, usually having the tail less deeply forked than the tail of the common swallows. [Written also marten.]

To grind or crush with, or as with, the teeth and prepare for swallowing and digestion; to chew; as, to masticate food.

A stomach; the receptacle into which food is taken by swallowing; in birds, the craw; -- now used only of the lower animals, exept humorously or in contempt. Chaucer. Bellies and maws of living creatures. Bacon.

arge part of the cranial nerves arise. It controls very largely respiration, circulation, swallowing, and other functions, and is the most vital part of the brain; -- called also bulb of the spinal cord. See Brain.

To cause to be swallowed up; to immerse; to sink; to absorb. To merge all natural ... sentiment in inordinate vanity. Burke. Whig and Tory were merged and swallowed up in the transcendent duties of patriots. De Quincey.

ously supposed to kill live stock, in the southern United States, by stinging or by being swallowed; as:

A small animal of Java (Paradoxirus fasciatus), allied to the civets. It swallows, but does not digest, large quantities of ripe coffee berries, thus serving to disseminate the coffee plant; hence it is called also coffee rat.

close; to form a hole, breach, or gap; to be unclosed; to be parted. The earth opened and swallowed up Dathan, and covered the company of Abiram. Ps. cvi. 17.

A medicine in the form of a little ball, or small round mass, to be swallowed whole.

of a pit or mine. -- Pit kiln, an oven for coking coal. -- Pit martin (Zoöl.), the bank swallow. [Prov. Eng.] -- Pit of the stomach (Anat.), the depression on the middle line of the epigastric region of the abdomen at the lower end of the sternum; the infrasternal depression. -- Pit saw (Mech.), a saw worked by two…

The act of inflating the middle ear by blowing air up the nose during the act of swallowing; -- so called from Prof. Politzer of Vienna, who first practiced it.

To swallow; -- said of fowls. Derham.

A form of redan, so named from its shape; -- called also swallowtail.

A swallow.

To drink with relish; to drink copiously of; to swallow in large draughts. "Quaffed off the muscadel." Shak. They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet Quaff immortality and joy. Milton.

gain; to draw in, or imbibe, again what has been effused, extravasated, or thrown off; to swallow up again; as, to reabsorb chyle, lymph, etc.; -- used esp. of fluids.

To swallow again; to swallow back. Tides at highest mark regorge the flood. DRyden.