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Billow
Definitions
- 1 A surname.
- 1 A large wave, swell, surge, or undulating mass of something, such as water, smoke, fabric or sound
"[…] Whom the winds waft where'er the billows roll, / From the world's girdle to the frozen pole;"
- 2 a large sea wave wordnet
- 1 To surge or roll in billows.
"During the preceding afternoon a heavy North Pacific fog had blown in … Scudding eastward from the ocean, it had crept up and over the redwood-studded crests of the Coast Range mountains, […], billowing steadily eastward, it had rolled up the western slopes of the Siskiyou Range, […]"
- 2 become inflated wordnet
- 3 To swell out or bulge.
"Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta."
- 4 rise and move, as in waves or billows wordnet
- 5 rise up as if in waves wordnet
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- 6 move with great difficulty wordnet
Etymology
From Middle English *bilwe, borrowed from Old Norse bylgja, from Proto-Germanic *bulgijō. Cognates include Danish bølge (“wave”); Norwegian Bokmål bølge (“wave”), Norwegian Nynorsk bylgje (“wave”); Swedish bölja (“wave”); German Low German Bulge, Bulg, Bülg (“billow, wave”); German Bulge (“billow, wave”). Compare bellow, bawl.
From Middle English *bilwe, borrowed from Old Norse bylgja, from Proto-Germanic *bulgijō. Cognates include Danish bølge (“wave”); Norwegian Bokmål bølge (“wave”), Norwegian Nynorsk bylgje (“wave”); Swedish bölja (“wave”); German Low German Bulge, Bulg, Bülg (“billow, wave”); German Bulge (“billow, wave”). Compare bellow, bawl.
Probably a variant of Bellow or Bellew.
See also for "billow"
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